Adblock Plus Logo and Asus Phone (Photo : Twitter)
Asus's smartphone and tablet browser has about 15 million users, which is a small figure compared to Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, or Mozilla Firefox. However, the Taiwanese company is planning to bake in Adblock Plus into all versions of its web browsers, switching it on by default The move will not only remove annoying ads from browsing, but will also reduce the chance of mobile devices being infected with malware.
Till Faida is Adblock Plus' co-founder and CEO. He told Motherboard that his company is pleased to team up with Asus, which will be the first major hardware maker to integrate ad blocking into mobile devices, according to PC Mag.
One repercussion of the partnership is that smaller and newer websites could be greatly affected. They will not get any ad revenue when Asus browser users visit their sites.
Adblock Plus recently updated its acceptable ads policy. It now gives users the option to allow certain ads to show up in their browser, according to Beta News.
In addition, PC Mag points out that the potential lost revenue is minimal due to the small market share of Asus browsers. However, it could help to set an industry standard that could be financially harmful to small websites that rely heavily on ad revenue.
Time will tell if other companies will follow Asus in adding Adblock Plus to their mobile devices. Earlier this year Apple added built-in ad-blocking capabilities into its iOS 9. Next year's trends will help to shape the ongoing debate about how online content should be paid for.
