Now one smartphone maker is building in ad blocking as standard
The proprietary Asus Browser will be set to automatically block website ads - except those that appear on Adblock Plus' "Acceptable Ads," whitelist, which lets through ads that aren't deemed interruptive to the browsing experience.
Business Insider has contacted both Asus and Adblock Plus for comment and we'll update this article once we hear back.
In a release sent to Motherboard, Adblock Plus cofounder and CEO Till Faida said: "We're extremely happy to team up with Asus, the first major hardware manufacturer to integrate ad blocking into their mobile devices. This is another call for innovation in the ad industry-a call getting louder by the day."
Mobile ad blocking began to take off this year after Apple announced it was to allow ad blocking apps into its app store for the first time, with the release of its iOS 9 update.
However, mobile ad blocking has yet to reach the level of desktop ad blocking - with just a 1.6% share of ad blocking browsing, according to a report from PageFair and Adobe that shows traffic data on the PageFair network - partly due to the effort required from the user. You have to download the app, then configure the settings in your browser, and the apps only work with certain browsers.
In part to combat this (and because Google doesn't allow apps that interfere with other apps in its app store,) Adblock Plus released its own Android browser that automatically blocks ads.
Having Adblock Plus baked in on a hardware manufacturer's default browser is another major coup for the German-based ad blocking company.
Motherboard says the Asus Browser only has around 15 million users, but news of the partnership could open up further doors with Adblock Plus with other manufacturers and browser companies too.