Albeit, mobile ad blocking is up 90 percent year-on-year, and there are now nearly twice as many people blocking ads on smartphones as there are on desktop.
And the most common way of blocking ads on smartphones has been through browsers adblock feature, enabled by default, with an estimate of 408 million people using ad blocking browser in March 2016, according to PageFair.
While there are browsers like Opera and Firefox, which offer users the option of configuring their settings to block ads, the research only included the number of people using browsers that block ads by default to come to its 408 million figure.
If the new report is to be believed, mobile ad blocking is driven by users in emerging markets.
PageFair claims that 36 percent of smartphone users in Asia-Pacific are blocking ads on the mobile web, and only 14 million monthly active users of ad blocking browsers were recorded in Europe and North America.
Adblock Plus, Brave, and UC Browser — owned by Chinese web giant Alibaba, appears as the most popular ad blocking browsers, with the later exploding in popularity in Asia.
The company predicts that ad blocking usage will continue to grow in places where data costs are high. Meanwhile, it is pertinent to note that the estimated figure equates to 21 percent of the world's smartphone population having ad blocking browser installed.
