Apple now allows Safari browser ad-blockers on its mobile devices such as iOS 9 smartphones and tablets, so The New York Times (NYT) studied how blocking ads affects an iPhone 6 user's data plan. NYT's findings showed that such software boosted battery life, greatly decreased data usage, and lowered loading times by seconds, thus saving money.
Ad-blocking tech has been available for PC browsers for a long time but is new for iOS devices, according to PC Mag. Users simply download an app and then switch on blocking in the Safari browsers.
NYT tested 50 news sites. It discovered that in the Safari browser ad-blockers reduced battery life by 21 percent, and visiting sites daily for a month can save up to about $10 in ad data storage.
NYT's test showed that over half of all data on the tested Web pages were from ads. The slowest load time was Boston.com's 30.8 seconds required to load 15.4 megabytes of advertising content, according to Engadget.
However, ad blockers also caused some drawbacks. Some sites and content can break, they refuse revenue to the sites visited, and they can make online shopping carts faulty on certain sites
NYT's Brian X Chen said that benefits of ad blocking are obvious. They not only end promotion clutter, but also boost browser load times and mobile devices' battery life.
Still, Chen mentioned that users could lose access to premium content. They could also destroy Web publishers' business models.