There has been a lot of talk about the upcoming iOS having content blockers – aka ad blocker – and TheNextWeb has brought attention to some interesting tests being done with iOS beta and focusing on ad blocking technology that is included with it… and it should scare anyone who makes money with online advertising.

There is an experimental content blocker for iOS called Crystal, which at its core is to reduce the time it takes to download webpages.  But one of the main ways it does this is by blocking ads, scripts and trackers on the webpage.

First is page speed… and with Crystal it drops the page download speed by at least half, and often a lot more.  TheNextWeb has some great screenshots showing side-by-side with and without Crystal and it is definitely much, much quicker with Crystal.  But pages load 3.9x faster with the time to load reduced by 74%, according to MurphyApps.

TheNextWeb did some side by side comparisons showing the speed difference, and it is quite noticeable when you see it in action.

This also means that webmasters will need to be aware of how their webpages render when Crystal is enabled for iOS users.  Because it not only disables ads but also scripts, it could cause rendering issues that could potentially increase bounce rate, even if the page download speed is improved.

There is no known emulator for this yet, for those who want to do page testing.  So you will need to download and give it a try.  Crystal is currently a closed public beta, but you can request access here but you do need to have iOS9 already to use it.