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I agree ads are bad. If I want something I will pay for it. I'm not like those cheapskates who won't pay for a music subscription, or thinks everything in life should just be as supported and free. Nothing in life is free and as for me I'll pay for the content I want without ads.
 
As a long time user of ad blockers, I welcome this news. Remember when Google used to make a big deal about their unobtrusive contextual text ads? Yeah, those were good times. Now the rising popularity of floating overlays, interstitials, on-click popups and autoplaying video ads, not to mention the omnipresent "like", "tweet", "share" buttons that track your browsing history and violate your privacy — it all makes using the web without ad block a miserable experience. Oh, and by the way, ad networks so frequently get hacked and serve malware to unsuspecting visitors that the old view of "if I only visit reputable sites I won't get infected" no longer applies, and ad blockers become essential if you want to keep your computer malware-free.

More broadly, however, this is a strategic shot across Google's bow and an attempt to hit them where it hurts the most. What worries me, though, is that it also makes the web platform less attractive to publishers, pushing them into Apple-controlled channels (App Store and Apple News) and therefore threatening the open web.
With iOS 8, which introduced randomized wi-fi MAC addresses to prevent tracking people's locations in stores and such, but left iBeacon as a sanctioned alternative, Apple was sending a message to businesses: "if you want to track our users, use our technology".
Ad-blocking extensions will only work in Safari, they won't affect Apple News or third-party apps. In this way, with iOS 9 Apple is sending a message: "if you want to show ads to our users, use our technology" (Apple News and iAd, or App Store).

So don't miss forest for the trees — Apple is an 800-pound gorilla fighting a cold war with Google over ecosystems and content distribution, and end users are mere pawns.
 
Ads that do not render performance of mobile browsers and do not interfere with a user's experience with a website are fine. Unfortunately, the majority of the websites that I frequent have extremely annoying ads that negatively affect the performance of Safari on my iPhone 6+. Not to mention ads that just make browsing certain sites extremely unpleasant.
 
I specifically won't buy anything that pops up as ads in web browsing - this is great news.
I do agree the dumping me out to the app store to install apps are worse. Those shouldn't be allowed.
 
How about blocking automatic redirects to the App Store?
I could have swore that feature was supposed to come in iOS 8 but never showed up. It's really needed, but now they put some back button in the status bar. Seems really clunky and hacky to my eyes. Sites shouldn't be able to automatically open the App Store without a user tapping on something.

I have mixed feelings about ad blockers. On the one hand content producers need to make money and unfortunately we live in an age where everybody wants everything for free. It's how MacRumors makes money! On the other hand I can see how this would be a move targeted at hurting Google and the evil empire they're building. Downloading ads also uses my data and can affect performance on certain sites…which can sometimes lead to frequent crashes of Safari on certain websites which I now avoid. It would be cool to only blacklist certain sites. I'd let MacRumors ads load. Or at least a toggle to only show some ads but not all of them. Hmmmm…
 
I could have swore that feature was supposed to come in iOS 8 but never showed up. It's really needed, but now they put some back button in the status bar. Seems really clunky and hacky to my eyes. Sites shouldn't be able to automatically open the App Store without a user tapping on something.

I have mixed feelings about ad blockers. On the one hand content producers need to make money and unfortunately we live in an age where everybody wants everything for free. It's how MacRumors makes money! On the other hand I can see how this would be a move targeted at hurting Google and the evil empire they're building. Downloading ads also uses my data and can affect performance on certain sites…which can sometimes lead to frequent crashes of Safari on certain websites which I now avoid. It would be cool to only blacklist certain sites. I'd let MacRumors ads load. Or at least a toggle to only show some ads but not all of them. Hmmmm…
It was almost off-handedly mentioned as being addressed in the release notes of one of the iOS 8 betas and that was it--meaning no mention of it anywhere else, nor did it seem like anything was actually done as the same behavior as usual still exists today.
 
I've had it up to here with ads on my 6 plus, particularly in the context of image or animated ads that get displayed on many sites including MacRumors, that send me off to the advertiser's website when I'm scrolling and accidentally touch it with a finger without ever willingly "clicking" it.
Better yet, ads that send my iPhone to the "a problem occurred with the website, so it was reloaded" dialog when I'm just halfway through the page. I couldn't use Engadget's site for some time because of the same problem.

So to Safari ads on iPhone I would say: Good riddance!
 
I don't mind ads in web pages, they're not an annoyance and I understand the need for revenue. I sometimes even click on the ads.

What bothers me is when I visit a website and the requested article/page is dimmed due to a popup advertisement blocking the content and requires my interaction. What I normally do in that case is take note of the product/vendor in the popup and go out of my way to shop at their competitors when I need the advertised goods/services. If you're going to make me go out of my way to dismiss something that I didn't request, then I'm going to go further out of my way to ensure that you lose a sale.

Moral of the story: don't annoy your visitors.
 
PageFair did a report on AdBlocking & found:

Adblock usage grew by nearly 70% between June 2013 – June 2014.
• There are about 144 million active adblock users around the world.
• Growth is driven by Google Chrome, on which adblock penetration nearly doubled between June 2013 – June 2014.
• Adblock usage varies by country. In some countries nearly one quarter of the online population has it installed.
• Adblock usage is driven by young internet users. 41% of 18-29 year olds polled said they use adblock.
• Adblock usage is higher with males, but female usage is still very significant.
• A majority of adblockers expressed some willingness to receive less intrusive ad formats (however they strongly rejected intrusive ad formats such as interstitials and popovers).

complete report: http://blog.pagefair.com/2014/adblocking-report/
 
Best feature in iOS 9, IMO. I honestly don't mind desktop ads that much, although I do use an adblocker. But on iOS device they are so, so much worse. As @ardchoille50 mentions, an iOS ad is more likely to require your interaction in some way. On a smaller screen, it's more crap to scroll through--I especially hate those huge square ones that *cough* some site we all know uses. Being a touch interface, it's much easier to accidentally tap on them. And don't get me started on the ones that open the freaking app store...
 
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Just stop those annoying ads that keep redirecting me to the app store.

And make sure this applies to webkit as well, because I get those redirects even in RSS apps.
 
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I think it would be good if apple added a feature for users, where you could pay a certain monthly fee (which apple could then distribute to various advertisers based on if you would have seen their ads), and any ads running on Apple's iAd network would be blocked from the devices of these users. That would be a good way to create a semi universal paid ad blocker.
 
I'm a little torn with this. On one hand there are some really unscrupulous publishers and advertising networks that make browsing on mobile a really horrible experience with forced redirects, auto opening app store, full screen adverts and videos etc. On the other hand publishers need to make a living, hosting isn't free, journalists need to eat. There needs to be a balance and I hope any plug-ins developed and approved by Apple have some sort of sliding scale of blocking strength and also allow white lists for trusted websites.
 
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