Apple’s latest iOS will allow users to block ads on their smartphones, thereby letting them join a consumer trend that has already turned nearly two hundred million personal computers into “no ad” zones. Some argue that it’ll be so popular that it’ll put content creators and publishers out of business.
How about it leading to improved ads, or replacing them with something better?
The argument for online advertising has never been convincing. 
At best, it sees ads as a tool for monetizing experience that is otherwise provided for free, and looks for proof to how well it worked for the proliferation and success of radio, and then TV.  
At worst, it’s a specious argument, because the Internet isn’t consumed via computers as another passive content channel. Mobile is experienced differently from that, as most use cases are related to different circumstances, many of them actionable, like shopping.
People tolerated ads on their TVs, never liked them on their computers, and really don’t like them on their smartphones.
Yet tech startups and established platforms have claimed that advertising is some magic pixie dust that should allow them to monetize content that was usually acquired and consistently offered for free. Few critics have challenged that assumption, choosing instead to reference its repeated failure to materialize as the result of a work in progress.
That work, and all of its someday benefits, are about to get a lot harder to believe. 

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