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Ad Blocking: Advertising 'Accounts For Half Of Data Used To Read Articles'

  • Guardian, Thursday, March 17, 2016 7:31 AM
Advertising could account for about half of data usage for people reading articles on their smartphones, according to a study by Enders Analysis. The Guardianreported that the study looked at six unnamed “popular publishers," both with and without an ad blocker, and found that anywhere between 18% and 79% of the data downloaded was from ads. In addition, anywhere between 6% and 68% of the downloaded data was from JavaScript, which is used to deliver more interactive elements of both editorial and advertising on pages.

The report said: “On the basis of this investigation, an estimate that says advertising accounts for half of all data used by publisher pages on iPhones does not look unreasonable. Publisher mobile pages are bloated, and advertising is an enormous part of that.” Mobile data usage has also become ground zero to the debate on ad blocking as mobile operator Three recently announced it's working with Shine, an Israeli company, to deploy ad blocking at a network level to consumers.

Read the whole story at Guardian »

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