Ads are eating your mobile data allowance

A new study has revealed that ads on smartphones account for between 18 and 79 percent of downloaded data. The astonishing statistic gives mobile users another reason to despise ads on top of the annoyance, security and privacy concerns they already bring about.

With most mobile users having to stick to a monthly allowance, the suggestion is that it's time for mobile pages to go on a diet. The research carried out by Ender Analysis also found that JavaScript accounted for between 6 and 68 percent of downloaded data.

The findings are important not only because ad-blocking is very much a hot topic at the moment, but also because more and more web traffic comes from mobile devices. Enders Analysis' research says that content providers need to adapt to take this into account:

The move from desktop to mobile, from banner to native and from web to apps provides advertisers and publishers with the opportunity to provide an acceptable advertising experience, ensuring that blocking of these new formats and properties never reaches the threatening levels currently on desktop.

As reported by the Guardian, Enders also says:

On the basis of this investigation, an estimate that says advertising accounts for half of all data used by publisher pages on iPhones does not look unreasonable. Publisher mobile pages are bloated, and advertising is an enormous part of that.

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