In Canada, 17 per cent of people have installed ad blockers on their desktop computers, according to a study conducted by the Interactive Advertising Bureau of Canada and comScore, which will be released early next month. One maker of an ad blocker has calculated that heavy ads – which eat up mobile data as they load – could be costing iPhone users in the United States as much as $8.3-billion (U.S.) in excess data charges each year. At the same time, a growing number of consumers and privacy advocates say, also accurately, that ads have become intrusive slow down the loading time for Web pages violate privacy by tracking people and collecting their data and generally make the experience of using the Web worse.

The dispute speaks to a wider debate that is questioning the fundamental structure of the Internet right now: Advertisers say, accurately, that their ads make free content possible – free Facebook browsing, free articles to read, free videos – by paying publishers and other content creators to also show you ads. 'Your plan to use our content to sell your advertising is indistinguishable from a plan to steal our content to publish on your own website,' members of the Newspaper Association of America wrote in a letter last week, threatening legal action. It proposes sharing 55 per cent of that revenue with publishers. Brave is essentially blurring the lines between a Web browser and an ad network.

But it's not Brave's ad blocker that's getting the most attention: It's another user option, which would not just strip ads out of publishers' pages, but also replace them with ads the browser itself is in charge of selling – and from which it would make money. Currently in beta and planning its wider release in August, Brave is jumping into the already heated debate around ad blocking.

and others, to shut it down.īrave is a new Internet browser, developed by former Mozilla CEO Brendan Eich, which has an ad blocker built right in for users who choose to see no ads. It hasn't even fully launched yet, and already it has incited a call from livid publishers including New York Times Co., The Washington Post, Tribune Publishing Co.

Brave blocker