Feature Article

Free eNews Subscription>>
October 06, 2015

iPhone Ad-Blockers Boost Battery Life, Accelerate Mobile Web Loading

Apple added support for ad blockers to its iPhone operating system in September, and it turns out that they conserve data use and battery life while also accelerating loading times for mobile Web pages.

The New York Times carried out research looking into the efficacy of various ad blocker choices. The researchers tested three ad-blocking apps: Purify, Crystal and 1Blocker.

The results were clear.

“For a number of websites that contained mobile ads with a lot of data, Web page data sizes decreased significantly and load times accelerated enormously with ad blockers turned on,” the paper said. “The iPhone’s battery life also improved — but more modestly — with ads removed.”

This makes sense, considering that most of the data on mobile homepages of the top 50 news websites comes from advertising.

For instance, when loading the Boston.com Website, the home page took 39 seconds to load on 4G with ads and eight seconds to load without. On average, it measured 19.4 megabytes; with ads removed using Crystal or Purify, it measured just four megabytes. With 1Blocker, it measured 4.5 megabytes.

The home page of The Los Angeles Times measured 5.7 megabytes with ads and 1.6 megabytes without on Crystal. It measured just 1.9 megabytes with Purify and 1Blocker. On a 4G network, the page took 11 seconds to load with ads and four seconds to load without ads.

When it came to battery life, the researchers found that an iPhone 6s over a Wi-Fi network with Purify and Crystal enabled took four hours to completely drain a fully charged battery. The 1Blocker app took three hours and 42 minutes. That’s compared to three hours and 18 minutes with no ad-blocking. On average, ad-blocking allowed a 21 percent battery life increase.

Proponents of ad-blocking say that if enough consumers say no to mobile ads, it will force advertisers and their outlets to create less intrusive marketing messages in the future.

“It’s just to improve websites in general and the advertising issues,” said Dean Murphy, the developer behind Crystal. “It’s mostly about performance.”

But, advertising is the main monetization engine for news and other sites—blocking them could effectively kill their business model, taking content out of the marketplace of ideas.

“If the economic engine is threatened, how do small indie publishers and small local news publishers sustain their online content?” Scott Cunningham, a general manager of the Interactive Advertising Bureau Tech Lab, asked the Times.

The answer remains to be seen.




Edited by Kyle Piscioniere


FOLLOW MobilityTechzone

Subscribe to MobilityTechzone eNews

MobilityTechzone eNews delivers the latest news impacting technology in the Wireless industry each week. Sign up to receive FREE breaking news today!
FREE eNewsletter