Last week, Apple released the latest version of its mobile operating system. And normally that news doesn’t resonate beyond the usual tech world headlines, but this time is different, thanks to the fact that for the first time, iOS 9 lets customers download ad blocking apps from its App Store.

That development has both advertisers and media companies using apocalyptic terms about their bottom lines, but might be viewed differently by users iPhone users who just want to read the news on their iPhones without commercial interruption. GPB’s Bradley George talks with science and technology correspondent Renay San Miguel about what it means for customers, and whether it will ultimately lead to them paying more to view mobile content.

·A lot has been written about this over the past week, but it’s just the latest version of the love-hate relationship people and businesses have long had with ads, whether in print, on TV and now on the internet.

Digital ad blockers aren’t new, but they are when it comes to the mobile space, and that’s where a lot of advertising money is now going. Pew Research estimates that $19 billion was spent on ads for smartphones and tablets last year, and that is now closing in on 40 percent of all advertising spending. People reading news and other content on their devices see more of these ads piling up in front of their content, and there’s nothing more frustrating than a poorly-designed ad that’s hard to get rid of and maybe kicks you off your browser. But the ad industry and publishers say those ads allow you to read that content for free, and also pays for the apps bringing you that content on your phone. That why in an op-ed piece published this week on Ad Age, the president of the Interactive Advertising Bureau, Randall Rothenberg, called ad blocking, “robbery, pure and simple.” He says 34 percent of U.S. adults now use ad blockers, and it’s costing some websites up to 40 percent of their revenue.

·Mobile ad blockers like Purify and BlockBear have shot to the top of the Productivity category of Apple’s App Store in just a week’s time. That’s good for Apple, but don’t they have to straddle a very fine line between the desires of their business partners, like media publishers, and what their customers want?

They do, and allowing ad blockers in the App Store is a big step towards keeping those customers happy. But those customers won’t stay happy if more and more paywalls are built around their favorite websites and apps. That’s why the new iOS 9 also includes the Apple News app, which is designed to really show off publisher’s content in a way that’s visually appealing and in some cases, exclusive to the app. But the best example of the struggle that’s going on with ad blockers, and Apple’s role in it, came last Friday, when Marco Arment, one of the founders of Tumblr, pulled his newest product, an ad blocker called Peace, from the App Store. It sold for $2.99 and was an instant hit. But then Arment was racked with guilt about what his app was doing to some publishers, and he decided to withdraw the app from circulation. He suggested that those who bought Peace get their money back, and Apple uncharacteristically played along and is now allowing refunds. As Arment himself noted in a subsequent blog post, that almost never happens with Apple, and it may give you some idea of how tricky this situation is for the company. iPhone and iPad users include a lot of millennials who are a favorite target of advertisers, and their digital media consumption habits are going to go a long way toward determining how both the tech and advertising industries handle this issue.

·To that end, some influentials in both those industries are saying this could be the wake-up call that advertising needs. If they come up with ads that are less annoying and offer up something different, as some TV ads have done, then ad blockers won’t be needed. Is the industry likely to do that?

To some extent, it’s already trying to go in different directions with the rise of so-called content marketing, a.k.a. brand journalism or native advertising, where the ad actually has some editorial value and is hard to distinguish between editorial content and advertising. Some A-list media companies already have content advertising divisions going full blast. The IAB’s Randall Rothenberg actually suggests some options like getting rid of annoying autoplay video ads, cutting down on ads tracking user data that can actually slow down how that content is sent to your phone, and in short just abandoning all the ways that ads have become annoying to users. When it comes to user data from mobile ads, the rise of ad blockers can be tied to that, because consumers are starting to fight back against who gets to see what sites they’ve visited. All of this is about users having more control, and we’ve been having that discussion since the advertising industry complained about VHS machines fast forwarding through TV commercials in the 80s, and digital video recorders automatically zapping ads when they first came on the scene.