122 million users in India were actively using mobile browsers with built-in ad blocking, as of March 2016, suggests a study conducted by PageFair. India stands second among the 17 countries identified by the study. India was second to China, which had 159 million monthly active users with a built-in ad blocking browser on mobile. Note that using browsers with ad blockers isn't the same as having ad blockers active, and even the browsers where ad blockers are native, may have users who view ads. In that context, there isn't a 1:1 correlation between ad blocking and the usage of ad blocking browsers. Some notes: - Why people use Adblockers: The study mentions that ad blocking browsers improve page speed and reduce bandwidth consumption on mobile, which is why "they are most rapidly adopted in markets where mobile data infrastructure is less developed and therefore slow and/or expensive relative to income. - Where they're being used: Mobile ad blocking is popular in Asia Pacific (APAC) markets wherein 4 countries including India, China, Pakistan and Indonesia put together had 329 million MAUs as of March using a mobile browser with a native ad blocker. This means that at least 36% of smartphone users in the APAC region used a mobile browser with a built-in ad blocker. In March 2016, the APAC region accounted for 55% of global smartphone users, but 93% of mobile adblocking browser usage came from APAC during the same month. It estimates that 61% of Indian smartphone users had ad blocking enabled…
