Ad-Blockers and the Business Reality.

By now as I write this article, many publishers would have already started creating technologies that bypass adblockers for running their businesses. Recent move by Apple to move out of its values (or what they have spoken till now) to provide content blockers on its mobile browser is really catastrophic for the publishers. The move could take ad-blocking on the mobile web mainstream, with serious implications for any business with a stake in online ads. I liked adblockers. In fact, I absolutely loved them until I really thought of it deeply by putting myself in the shoes of publishers. The reason I used the word catastrophic is because it really is if Apple does that in such scale. It is estimated that 60% of web traffic today comes from Mobile devices out of which many (not majority) are iOS devices. Now that Apple is giving an option for its users to download adblockers and use them in Safari, Apple is not just killing Google and Facebook which primarily rely on Ad business, they are giving a death call to publishers.

Where did it all start?

Google is the first word that comes to anybody's mind if one thinks of the word free or ad. Google is not giving everything free for philanthropy. It is creating a business model around a service where the primary service is given free to the users (at least on disguise) but charges users in the form of their data. Tim Cook recently said, "if somebody are making money mainly by collecting gobs of personal data, I think you have a right to be worried. As far as we, Apple are concerned, you are not our product." Apple tried and tried hard to convince people to move away from free services like Google to protect their privacy. But at the end, every user votes for themselves on the tradeoffs on whether or not he wants contextual services (Google Now) by sacrificing privacy, whether or not he is ready to trust all his personal collection of photos to one company for free (Google photos) or paying for it. It eventually boils down to the user on tradeoffs he's going to make. The problem now to Apple is that they are unable to turn enough of the users away from Google. 

We read many blogs online everyday. It is estimated that more than half of the publishers rely on Google's AdSense for the ads to be served. Whether they use Google's services or anybody else's, Apple allowing content blockers on their web browsers implies, revenues for many blogs is going to plummet. It has been just a day that iOS 9 is released which support adblockers and all the apps that are adblockers are already topping the charts on the App Store. Users are surely annoyed about the ads and my personal experience says that content blocking allows you to load your webpages as quick as twice as fast depending on the density of media these ads deploy but blocking them altogether is harsh. 

Apple may come out and say, we care about user experience more and all the other things less but on the way to their vision they have to look back and reflect upon casualties of their decisions because they are no more a startup. Their decisions do not create ripples. Their weight now disposes water from the ocean to the bank. Some even say that the debut of both Apple news app and content blockers is not a coincidence but a conspiracy. I'm not going that far to suggest the same but can say with some certainty that Apple is having a cruel laugh as they are now successfully blocking revenue sources of Google.

What should publishers do now?

Big companies that rely majorly on ad revenue like Google, Amazon, Facebook are purportedly paying millions of dollars to major adblocker players like ABP to whitelist their ads. Now that Apple is personally involved in this they seem to have upped the ante. It is rumoured that Adblocker plus creator is now working alongside Google to block the adblockers. (what an irony!) Google has already updated Youtube's code and is penalising users that use adblockers by forcing them to see the whole ad taking away the option to skip the ad. 

All these futile attempts aside, if we speak of current ads, they are cluttered, passé and an overhaul is long due. Now all the publishers should seriously consider revamping the ads and should think of  ways to deal with adblockers. One way is to politely ask users to switch off adblockers. (A publisher can know whether or not a user is using an adblocker by running a simple html script) Second way is to deceive adblockers by serving inline ads. Curated ads is another way to deal with the problem. Rather than serving up random ads that come directly out of Google's servers which are often deceptive, publishers can always serve users with better, contextually relevant ads which serves the purpose of one, better user experience and two, the probability for the ad to be clicked. 

Its now on the publishers come up with a business model around the new developments of adblocking and strive to serve it's readers.

iPhone, iPad Pro and Apple TV - The Critique.

Tim Cook started the keynote by saying "We are really firing on all cylinders and we are about to make some monster announcements across several of our product lines." Boy they indeed delivered on what they have promised. Its been almost 4 years since Steve Jobs passed away and the flow of ideas is still consistent from Apple. Whether you like Apple or not, these keynotes are phenomena in themselves. Nobody seems able to replicate the scale and energy. Apple Keynotes are the least acknowledged among the best products of Steve Jobs! Now let's look at what's changed.

iPad Pro

This is BIG — both in size and scale! The new iPad Pro is a monster with 12.9" screen 78% larger than the standard 9.7" iPad. iPad has been a huge success initially but gradually the sales are slowing down - a concern for Apple. Nothing is really wrong in recent iterations but its just that people are upgrading their iPads less often. Apple is not shying away from doing whatever necessary to increase its sales. Deal with IBM to develop enterprise applications is an example on how far Apple is willing to go to revive the growth of iPad. Not stopping there, Apple even gave its keynote space to Microsoft to debut its Office suite on iPad. There was a stunned silence from the audience when Apple put Microsoft's name on the screen but thats the distance Apple is willing to go if they see an opportunity.

There is a lot of discussion on the internet that Apple is doing things Steve Jobs hated - the stylus. But the fact is when Steve said about stylus, he was referring to mediocre styluses on resistive touch screens. Not the kind of stylus Apple debuted through "Apple Pencil." If History was any evidence, Steve Jobs always did things he said he would not. He said iPod with video would fail and the next year, first iPod with video capabilities came out. He said he would never do a phone. iPhone was a history. Steve Jobs was an amazing in flipping and flipping is an art. Things do change and you have to change accordingly. Be rigid and you are preparing your route to oblivion. Moreover Steve Jobs' parting advice to Tim Cook is to "Do what's right. Never think what I would have done. Just do what's right."

iPad Pro could have many implications and many use cases that we never would have imagined. Through iPad Pro, Apple is clearly targeting photo-editing professionals and enterprise employees who run multiple apps side by side. New Photoshop app from Adobe and might of iPad to support multiple apps with 4 GB RAM is the evidence. This potentially could have a huge impact on the industry and its up to the developers now to decide on the places and use cases they take it to.

Apple TV

Apple has always been the company that started with a less - capable but user friendly operating system and add features to it over time based on the advancements of the hardware. They did the same with iPad where they took mobile operating system iOS to a bigger canvas when the competitors are trying to port stripped down versions of Windows on to the tablet hardware. There lies the brilliance of Apple. They are doing something similar with the Apple TV. While the competitors are out with game consoles that can do a bit of entertainment, Apple started with entertainment and overtime started giving gaming capabilities to this device. This is a completely different animal when compared to X box or PS both in price and positioning. Apple has a large advantage in the form of developers and the community is ripe with innovations. They are making unique value proposition with developers, thanks to Apple users who buy more when compared to the users of it's competitors. Siri integration into Apple TV is great and with the same pace we are nearing a day in the future where we would finally cut the cord!

iPhone 6s and 6s plus

Now we come to a product that is earning 56% of the total revenues for Apple. Whether Apple admits it or not, iPhone is the most important product for Apple. Smartphones are maturing and innovation in this sector is drying up. Making things work is where Apple really relies on.... Until now. With force touch, Apple is taking advantage of its unique strength - hardware-software integration. It might take some time for competitors to come up with similar UI as hardware and software manufacturers are different. While Apple's force touch user is neatly implemented, it takes time getting used to as there is some learning curve involved. In the end, this gesture adds another UI interaction and as Apple is opening up the API of force touch, its time for developers to start fiddling with it and come up with new features. The only downside of force touch is that Apple can not be free from fragmentation of Apps now . Now that the new iPhones require different apps written to make use of force touch, there would be some fragmentation involved.

The updated optics and the live photo feature are the other talking points of iPhone. The live photo feature might shake the industry and may give Apple a first mover advantage as facebook and instagram have already announced that they would start supporting this new format. Though similar feature already exists in some phones of htc, Apple nails in implementation yet again. Making use of screen as a flash for selfies is one another nice implementation. For this Apple included a chip in the iPhone that drives the brightness of the screen 3 times more to its normal brightness. This great additions make this iPhone a compelling purchase!

All said the iPhone is on route to reign the title of "best smartphone in the industry" yet again and Apple, as always is going to remain the market leader. 

Here's the full keynote.