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Will Apple’s iOS 9 adblocker kill mobile ads?
With online privacy becoming a growing global concern, adblocking has risen in popularity among consumers over the past couple of years. To date, adblocking has largely been confined to desktop, but this week it comes to mobile with the release of iOS 9, which will come with integrated options for Content (read ‘advertising’) Blocking built-in.
The issue of online privacy is not just about brands seeing what consumers are up to online; people are also concerned about their family knowing what they are doing online. Predictably, this is largely about pornography. According to Thinkbox research last year in the UK, 16-34s now spend 15 minutes a day watching porn and don’t want to reveal this private browsing behaviour.
But it is the issue of advertising personalisation, targeting and retargeting that concerns our industry, and various desktop tools and systems have emerged to counter these activities. ZenithOptimedia’s recent research with GlobalWebIndex across 34 markets and 200,000 panellists highlights the take-up of privacy products:
1. Almost half the global internet population (46 per cent) has used ‘private browsing’
2. 40 per cent have deleted cookies so that websites can’t track their behaviour
3. 27 per cent have used an adblocker so that brands can’t track and serve personalised advertising
4. 15 per cent have used anti-tracking software that combines all three of the above into one.
So, adblocking is a clear issue for our industry. iOS 9 will enable people to switch on adblocking at the device level. The effect though will be to block ads that appear within the browser. As well as keeping a person’s mobile web activities private, mobile adblocking will have the added twofold benefit of speeding up page-load times (important on mobile) and reducing data charges (even more important).
Understandably there is much consternation among the advertising fraternity, particularly on the publisher side. However the concern is somewhat misplaced, certainly from a marketer’s perspective. The reason for this is that the majority of mobile adblockers will work on mobile browsers but not in-app. And 84 per cent of mobile time spent is in-app (source: Flurry). With that in mind the initial impact of iOS9 will be limited. In the longer term, though, we see the impact of iOS9 Content Blocking being threefold:
1. It will accelerate the demise of the mobile web banner. This no bad thing and it is frankly surprising that the banner (a legacy format of the desktop environment) ever made its way onto mobile devices in the first place.
2. It will accelerate the growth of native in-app mobile advertising (e.g. newsfeed advertising). This advertising is by definition integrated with the user interface and therefore a better experience, generally yielding better results for advertisers too. We have adjusted our spend forecasts based on the Apple announcement: native to represent 25 per cent of display advertising by 2017 globally (source: ZenithOptimedia).
3. As a result of points 1 and 2, the creative/production process will need to adapt to take account of the rise of native formats and the move away from standardised formats.
DISCLAIMER: The author of this article is ZenithOptimedia chief digital officer. The article has been sourced from ZenithOptimedia’s website. The views expressed here are purely personal views of the author and Indiantelevision.com does not necessarily subscribe to them.
MUMBAI: 2025 will be remembered as the year India’s OTT industry stopped chasing scale for its own sake and began reckoning with how audiences actually consume content. Completion rates fell, patience wore thin and the limits of long-form excess became impossible to ignore. In this guest column, Pratap Jain, founder and CEO of ChanaJor, traces how micro-drama moved from the fringes to the centre of viewing behaviour, why short-form fiction emerged as a retention engine rather than a trend, and how platforms that respected time, habit and emotional payoff were the ones that truly grew up in 2025.
If there is one thing 2025 will be remembered for in the Indian OTT industry, it’s this: the industry finally stopped pretending.
Stopped pretending that bigger automatically meant better.
Stopped pretending that viewers had endless time.
Stopped pretending that scale without retention was success.
What began as a quiet reset in 2023 and a cautious correction in 2024 turned into a very visible shift in 2025. Business models matured. Content strategies tightened. And most importantly, platforms started aligning themselves with how Indians actually watch content, not how the industry wished they would.
At the centre of this shift was micro-drama—not as a trend, but as a behavioural inevitability.
When OTT finally understood the time problem
For years, long episodes were treated as a marker of seriousness. A 45–60 minute runtime was almost a badge of credibility. Shorter formats were pushed to the margins, labelled as “snack content” or “mobile-only.”
That belief quietly collapsed in 2025.
What platform data showed very clearly was not a drop in interest—but a drop in patience. Viewers weren’t rejecting stories. They were rejecting commitment.
Across platforms, the same patterns appeared:
* First-episode drop-offs on long-form shows kept increasing
* Completion rates continued to slide
* Viewers were sampling more titles but finishing fewer
At the same time, shows with episodes in the six to 10 minute range started showing the opposite behaviour: higher completion, higher repeat viewing, and stronger daily habit formation.
Micro-drama didn’t win because it was short. It won because it respected time.
Micro-Drama didn’t arrive loudly. It took over quietly.
There was no single moment when micro-drama “launched” in India. It crept in through dashboards and retention charts.
By mid-2025, it was clear that viewers were happy watching four, five, sometimes six short episodes in one sitting—even when they wouldn’t finish a single long episode. Romance, relationship drama, slice-of-life conflict, and grounded comedy worked especially well.
This wasn’t disposable content. It was compressed storytelling.
In shorter formats, there was no room for indulgence. Every episode had to move the story forward. Weak writing was punished faster. Strong writing was rewarded immediately.
Micro-drama raised the bar instead of lowering it.
Where ChanaJor naturally fit into this shift
ChanaJor didn’t pivot to micro-drama in 2025 because the market demanded it. In many ways, the platform was already built around the same viewing behaviour.
From the beginning, ChanaJor focused on short-to-mid-length fictional stories that felt close to everyday Indian life—hostels, rented flats, office romances, small-town relationships, young people figuring things out. Stories that didn’t need heavy context or cinematic scale to connect.
What worked in ChanaJor’s favour in 2025 was clarity:
* A clearly defined audience
* Tight episode lengths
* Storytelling that prioritised emotion and pace over spectacle
While several platforms rushed to copy global micro-drama formats, ChanaJor stayed rooted in familiar Indian settings and conflicts. That familiarity mattered. Viewers didn’t have to “enter” the world of the show—it already felt like theirs.
Why audiences started responding differently
One of the biggest misconceptions going into 2025 was that audiences wanted shorter content because their attention spans had reduced. That wasn’t entirely true.
What viewers actually wanted was meaningful payoff per minute.
On platforms like ChanaJor, episodes didn’t waste time setting the mood for ten minutes. Conflicts arrived early. Characters were recognisable within moments. Emotional hooks landed fast.
A typical consumption pattern looked like real life:
* One episode during a break
* Two more before sleeping
* A few the next day
This is how viewing habits are built—not through marketing spends, but through comfort and consistency.
Viewers came back not because every show was a blockbuster, but because they knew what kind of experience to expect.
2025 was also the year OTT faced business reality
The other big change in 2025 was on the business side. Subscriber growth slowed. Discounts stopped hiding churn. Customer acquisition costs rose.
Platforms were forced to ask harder questions:
* Are viewers finishing what they start?
* Are they returning without reminders?
* Is this content worth what we’re spending on it?
This is where micro-drama began outperforming expectations. A well-written short series could deliver sustained engagement without massive budgets. It didn’t peak for one weekend and disappear—it stayed alive through repeat viewing.
Platforms like ChanaJor benefited because they weren’t chasing inflated launch numbers. The focus was on consistency and retention, not noise.
Failures Became Visible Faster
2025 also exposed weaknesses brutally.
Several platforms assumed micro-drama was a shortcut—short episodes, quick shoots, instant traction. What they discovered was that bad writing fails faster in short formats than in long ones.
Viewers dropped off within minutes. Episodes were abandoned mid-way. Weak stories had nowhere to hide.
Micro-drama didn’t forgive laziness. It amplified it.
The platforms that survived were the ones that treated short storytelling with the same seriousness as long-form—sometimes more.
OTT Stopped Chasing Prestige and Started Chasing Habit
Perhaps the most important shift in 2025 wasn’t technical or creative—it was psychological.
OTT stopped trying to look like cinema. It stopped chasing validation through scale and awards alone. It began behaving like what it actually is in people’s lives: a daily companion.
Platforms like ChanaJor found their space here because that mindset was already baked in. The goal wasn’t to dominate a weekend launch. It was to quietly become part of someone’s everyday viewing routine.
That shift changed everything—from release strategies to how success was measured.
What 2025 Ultimately Taught the Industry
By the end of the year, three truths were impossible to ignore:
* Time is the most valuable thing a viewer gives you
* Retention matters more than reach
* Format must follow behaviour, not ego
Micro-drama didn’t take over because it was fashionable. It took over because it fit real life.
Looking Ahead
Micro-drama is not replacing long-form storytelling. It is redefining the baseline of engagement.
Longer shows will survive—but only when they earn their length. Short-form fiction will continue to evolve, becoming sharper, more emotionally confident, and better written.
Platforms like ChanaJor have shown that it’s possible to grow without shouting—by understanding the audience, respecting their time, and telling stories that feel real.
2025 wasn’t the year OTT became smaller. It was the year it became smarter.
Note: The views expressed in this article are solely the author’s and do not necessarily reflect our own.
