It does make sense. Apple aren't helping people block ads because they don't like ads; Apple are helping people block ads to "enhance privacy" (and also for "if everyone's gonna do it anyway, it may as well be fast" reasons, but never mind those.)

When a third party serves an ad to a user, the third party gets information about that person (their IP address, etc.) When Apple serves an ad to one of their users on behalf of an advertiser, on the other hand, the third party doesn't get any information at all.

Sure, Apple now knows I saw an ad... but Apple knows a lot of stuff about me; I'm already assuming they're trusted with my personal information the moment I set up iCloud Keychain or Find My Mac. Reducing the number of companies that know things about me down to the bare minimum (i.e. the same number that I actually do business with) is not a bad deal.

...of course, if iOS shipped with a "hosts file"-like configuration point, such that one could block iAds, that'd be a much more interesting world. (And not, strictly speaking, an impossible one; "featureful" VPN-proxy services are becoming more common—even Google is giving one away as part of Project Fi, to avoid "dirty" wifi—and iOS supports system VPNs, so you could set up your ad filtering at the head-end. I have no idea what Apple would do if this became common, though. Maybe just give app developers an API to ask whether "the phone can reach the internet but the ads aren't loading", and switch to a separate "hey stop that" view controller.)

I think it will be a good change if publishers were forced to sell/deliver their own ads. The problem has always been third-party ad networks that track you across the web and sometimes delivers malware. Publishers have never had to take ownership for the ads they serve and the user experience has suffered.

The way forward is native ads (no, native ads aren't advertorials) like podcast ads, radio ads, or sponsored posts on individual blogs like Daring Fireball.

The problem is with publishers too small to individually attract the attention of advertisers... which is most of the ones that use advertising to begin with. Any way to solve that problem reintroduces an ad network in some form or another.

Or would you say that advertising is only for big shots, and small-time publishers should just rely on up-front payment?

It's possible to have ad networks, but for publishers to host the software themselves. This would eliminate the tracking and cookies that follow you from site to site.

You expect them to discard click fraud and also pay out on self reported impressions?

Third party ad networks should pivot and provide a single binary executable (e.g. Go/Rust/C++ application) that a website owner adds to his website. And that binary app delivers the ads from the ad network and the website can choose how he integrates it to the website. The ad network will receive a list of URLs from the binary where it checks (with different IPs) if the ad is displayed to the user and if the image file hash is the same. Such an ad would be good for the users privacy (no more third party JS), good for the website owner (more ads delivered, more money), and good for the ad network (ads delivered also to users with adblockers) - a win-win-win situation.

Even with all that data, ad networks have massive problems with click fraud. Now you want them to discard all that and even pay the website owners according to their self reported visitor numbers? Good Luck with that.

How is a binary blob self reported? It can be signed and is totally in control of the ad network, just runs on the actual website. And click fraud wouldn't even exist if the ad network would pay per page impression/view. And ad networks will have to adapt in some way anyway for iOS9.

The Question is how does the website owner prove real organic impressions to the Advertiser? If people can buy ad clicks, they also can buy fraudulent ad impressions. A manipulated reverse proxy could also simulate fake impressions. What could work is if cloudflare becomes an ad network and injects advertising into your site.

even big publishers like Yahoo can't do that because there's an average of 20 companies between then and the brands advertising. publisher would love to be alone in the field and pocket the .20 per click. but ad agencies go a long way to doubt the publisher reports etc and try to pay less.

every month a new layer show up, with the sole promise of allowing the ad vendor to pay less for the publisher. the fad du jour is viewable.

But the other way could work. A service like Cloudflare could become an ad network and inject ads in transit.

In fact, yet another of iOS 9's features is a custom VPN protocol API, so you could probably do this purely client side as a "VPN" that just connects directly but blocks certain hosts.

Disclaimer: There may be reasons this wouldn't work, technical or approval-wise, that I'm not aware of.

    Each of the network extension points requires special permission from Apple.

Whatever that means.

https://developer.apple.com/library/prerelease/ios/releaseno...

This just brings iOS to parity with OS X though, I keep seeing people talking about this as if it's exclusive to iOS to make some strained point about Apple. Both OS X and iOS now use this same implementation, where the blocking extension is little more than a JSON blob of rules describing what should be blocked from loading or hidden on the page.

What's your source for the assertion that the News app will serve ads?

That aside, iAds are way nicer than ads on other platforms. The platform protects user privacy and doesn't resort to trickery and deception, and ads and advertisers are vetted. This stuff matters.

And that's why I run my home wifi through Privoxy (runs on my router, a Ubiquiti ER-Lite which is just Debian MIPS + Vyatta) and jailbreak to install Adblocker Networks.