A new PageFair report estimates that as of March 2016, 419 million people, or 22% of the world’s 1.9 billion smartphone users, are blocking ads on the mobile web. It was previously reported that mobile adblocking use was much lower. 

“Adblocking Goes Mobile” by PageFair, in partnership with app intelligence firm Priori Data, provides the first empirical research on mobile adblocking. The report defines the landscape of mobile adblocking, and reveals that in-app ads on platforms such as Spotify, Apple News, and CNN are vulnerable to adblocking. One of the report’s insights is that it is possible to block “suggested” content in Facebook and Instagram and and other ads in Facebook’s mobile app. The report finds that mobile adblocking grew by 90% globally in 2015.  Adblocking browsers, which are mobile browsers that block ads by default, account for the majority of mobile adblocking. This type of adblocking is most popular in emerging markets such as China, India, Indonesia, and Pakistan, where the next billion are coming online for the first time exclusively on mobile devices with low bandwidth, relatively expensive data connections. 

“This report tells a sobering story about the future viability of ad-funded media and journalism in developing economies. Adblocking now threatens all mobile channels. Failure to address user concerns about mobile advertising in North America and Europe will lead to the same kind of widespread adblock usage that we are seeing in the Asia Pacific region,” said Sean Blanchfield, CEO and co-founder at PageFair.

36% of smartphone users in Asia-Pacific are currently blocking ads on the mobile web.  In India and Indonesia over 60% of smartphone users are blocking ads on the mobile web. In China, almost one-third of smartphone users are blocking ads.

Mobile adblocking is also gaining popularity in the United States and Europe, but in different ways.  As of March 2016 there were 14 million active users of adblocking browsers on smartphones in Europe and North America.  Content blocking and in-app adblocking apps were downloaded a further 4.9 million times from the Apple and Android app stores in Europe and North America since September 2014.  Adblocking browsers are more than twice as popular in Europe than in North America, with over 27 users per thousand smartphones, and content blocking apps are three times more popular in North America than in Europe, with nearly 9 users per thousand smartphones.

Despite the hype, Apple’s introduction of “content blocking” on iOS 9 has yet to have a significant impact. In the US only 2% of Apple device users (1.9 million) who could do so have downloaded a content blocking app as of March 2016. 

"These app download estimates, which are modelled from real data provided to us by over 15,000 ranked apps across the App and Play Store’s biggest global markets, are the best picture so far of adblocking app downloads.  At Priori Data, given our ability to provide daily performance estimates for every app, we are uniquely positioned to monitor the adoption of this trend across the global ecosystem,” said Patrick Kane, CEO and founder at Priori Data.

In August, PageFair and Adobe’s 2015 Adblocking Report put the issue of adblocking on the international agenda, revealing that there were 198 million adblock users on desktop browsers. PageFair is the leading authority on adblocking. It provides analytics for publishers and has ad serving technology that cannot be circumvented by adblocking.