Since it’s release ten months ago, AdClear’s Advanced Protection feature has transformed ad blocking on Android. By using a certificate, AdClear is able to block encrypted ads. With most top sites migrating to HTTPS, most of our competitors have had to imitate Advanced Protection out of necessity.

The latest medium for ad serving is streaming apps. With each network wanting to create their own Hulu, many consumers have felt comfortable getting rid of cable. Though these apps are very convenient, they’re guilty of one of the most annoying (and for marketers, valuable) ad strategies: repetition. Ads strive to be impressionable, and showing it multiple times guarantees it. When a thirty-minute show takes two commercial breaks, catching up on your favorite show could repeatedly expose you to the same few ads for weeks at a time.

The kicker is that it’s becoming common practice for these apps to take control of your phone’s volume to keep you from muting ads. Thus, for thirty seconds each episode, Clorox might spiritually own part of your device. There is no reasoning: advertisers will stop at nothing to force and insure viewership of their ads. The only choice consumers have is an ad blocker.

Currently, there’s no reliable way to block ads on these apps. There are several reasons for this, chief possibly being that a good amount of streaming services refuse to run with an ad blocker enabled. This is true for most cable network apps that feel obligated to protect the programming they’ve only recently made available online.

Is the security of these apps impenetrable, at least to the point of infeasibility for a consumer product? Not in the least. We feel confident that we will figure it out, and if not, the open source community has never had a problem they couldn’t tackle. There will also be the point of working with the functionality of these apps. It would be disappointing for ads to be replaced with a black screen for the same amount of time. Expect big changes on this front as he head into the new year.

To support SEVEN’s development, try out AdClear for Android. We’d love to hear your feedback in our Beta program. You’ll be able to test out updates before they’re released. If you’re interested, contact me using the email address below. It’s available for free from our website. We also recently released the AdClear Lite extension for Safari and Samsung Browser. We also have a special announcement: AdClear for iOS is coming soon! Email me for details on its beta program.

For inquiries, contact:
Christian Sandlin
csandlin@seven.com