Opera Announces Faster Native Ad-Blocking

Opera has announced a new feature that brings native ad blocking to the browser promising to make browsing the internet faster. Since the ad-blocking tech is native and not an extension, Opera says that it works faster and happens at the web engine level. Opera says that it is the very first major browser to integrate ad-blocking features; others rely on extensions to block ads.

Opera justifies the integration of ad-blockers by saying that the bloated ads on some sites today use more bandwidth and at times trick people into clicking fake download buttons. Some of the ads also track your online behavior. Opera says that along with its ad-blocking tech, it is also giving a tool to help advertisers and users understand the problem with heavy ads in the hope of changing the ad industry.

The Opera ad-blocker detects when there are ads on a page that can be blocked and suggests enabling the ad-blocking feature when they are detected. Users can choose to activate or deactivate web blocking for specific websites. By clicking the shield icon in the address bar. One place where the native blocking is faster is in how the list of blocked sites are checked.

Opera says that it checks with native code and fast algorithms reducing slow down while the check is performed. Extensions spend more time checking to see if URLs are on their block lists. Opera uses block lists from EasyList including the EasyList for ads and EasyPrivacy list that stops trackers. Opera claims that its integrated ad-blocker is 45% faster that browsing on Chrome with ABP extension enabled. Opera says that it is 89% faster than IE and 21% faster than Firefox with ABP installed.

SOURCE: Opera