Original title: Can We Stop The Ads? Taxonomy and Characterization of Smartphone Splash Ads and Existing Countermeasures
Shuhao Zhang, Xinyu Liu, Ziyu Shao, Yuqing Yang +1 · September 2026
Splash ads are full-screen advertisements that appear right when you open a smartphone app. They can trick you into opening unwanted websites or other apps through hidden triggers, such as simply moving your phone. These ads cause serious real-world problems. They delay emergency responses, distract drivers, and make apps harder for visually impaired people to use. Researchers wanted to see if existing ad blockers could stop them. They analyzed how these defenses work and tested them against real splash ads. They discovered that stopping these ads is very difficult. Most defenses require risky steps like modifying apps, jailbreaking phones, or writing code. Out of eleven tested tools, only one tool successfully stopped the unwanted redirects in every test app. Even that single tool needed special permissions, and it still showed the ad for about one second before closing it.
You are trying to open your front door. Every time you grab the handle, a salesperson jumps in front and tries to push you into a different store. You cannot get inside without first dealing with them. In this paper, the front door is the app you want to open, the salesperson is the splash ad, and the different store is a third-party website. The researchers tested tools to get past the salesperson, but most required breaking the door or installing complicated gadgets.
Splash ads aren't just annoying — they've delayed emergency calls and distracted drivers. Current defenses require rooting your phone or paying for tools, and even the best one still shows the ad for a second before dismissing it. This paper shows how hard it is to block these ads and argues that phone makers need to step in.
The evaluation only covered 10 apps and 11 tools, so results may not generalize to all apps or defenses. The paper does not propose a new solution, only analyzes existing ones. The one effective tool required Accessibility permission, which raises privacy concerns. The study does not test on different phone models or operating system versions.
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Can We Stop The Ads? Taxonomy and Characterization of Smartphone Splash Ads and Existing Countermeasures — Shuhao Zhang, Xinyu Liu, Ziyu Shao et al.
Abstract licence: CC0
Explanation generated by Synthesis from the abstract — it is not the original paper. This is a preprint, so it hasn't necessarily been peer reviewed.