How Apple's new ad-blocker could save the media (maybe)

The latest threat to ad-supported online media is a feature in the new version of Apple's Safari web browser called "Reader". At the push of a button, it removes "visual distractions" from web articles . Or, to use Apple's full description, "annoying ads and other visual distractions". There are already tools with the same effect – Instapaper and Readability are the most famous – but this one could end up available by default on any net-enabled device from Apple. Publishers, you may step up your panic now. The most popular conspiracy theory regards Safari Reader as a way of pushing publishers and advertisers towards Apple's new iAd app advertising platform , which is already scarily successful before launch , and where they will not have to worry about ad-blocking technologies. There are also calm, sensible people who point out that Safari accounts for less than 5% of web browsing . But I have another scenario to propose. This is the Absurdly Optimistic Scenario, hereafter AOS. What differentiates Safari Reader from the likes of Adblock Plus, if Wired's Epicenter blog has it right , is that you have to press the button each time you want to make those annoying/revenue-critical "distractions" disappear, on each new page, rather than making a one-off decision to banish ads. It therefore equips web readers with a granular way of responding to crappy design and greedy, ad-stuffed pages. And you know the other thing that's due to kill ad-supported online media? Too much ad inventory . In the AOS, Safari Reader and technologies like it will (i) create a pressure to reduce the number of ads on a page, especially intrusive ones, and especially at the premium, Apple-user-filled end of the media market (ii) create a means of demonstrating to advertisers the premium value of space on simple, elegant, readable pages. In other words, two of the big threats to the ad-supported model, ad-blocking and excess inventory, might end up cancelling each other out. I did promise you absurd optimism. Even if that doesn't happen – as, to be honest, seems most likely – technologies like Safari Reader sound a salutary warning to media companies and advertisers. From now on, we must love our readers or die . On the other hand, given how overdetermined the death of traditional media seems to be – I expect the corpse to have as many stab wounds as the victim in Murder on the Orient Express – that, too, may be overly optimistic. It could be that we must love our readers and die .