The day has come — network-wide ad-blocking is becoming a thing in Europe, with Three entering into a deal with the Israeli start-up Shine. The deal involves Shine introducing their technology into the Three networks’ customers’ phones that will allow them to opt-in to blocking all of the ads on their phones, including both the ones in the browser and in the apps. This naturally makes the representatives of the advertising industry, and those whose revenue relies on income from advertising, feel quite uncomfortable, to say the least.
But let’s stop and think what the Three / Shine deal could mean for the consumers, especially if other networks follow suit and the UK becomes a mobile advertising-free zone. Of course, on the positive side, it means you might get rid of the annoying pop-ups that appear when you’re trying to check the news at 6.30 in the morning. It might also remove the banner from the top of your favourite food blog. That sounds great, doesn’t it? It would also limit your data usage and save time when loading pages.
However, let’s stop and think how your favourite food blogger is paying for her blog — the web domain, the camera for taking appetising pictures, the fact that the blog is her job and only source of income. It’s mostly through those little ads she puts on her website. By imposing a blanket ban on all ads, the people who are hurt most are effectively the most vulnerable links in the Internet’s food chain — start-ups, small companies, freemium app developers etc. In essence, those who rely on revenue from advertising to stay in business. However, maybe it’s time for they all to find a way to have the cake and eat it — a way to get revenue from advertising without alienating their clients with annoying popups.
There is another, perhaps more important view to consider. If the block imposed on your phone is of an all-or-nothing kind (and it appears that this might be what Shine is going for at the moment), unless you turn the blockage off completely, you don’t exactly know what is being blocked. Is it really just ads? Or can they possibly block some of the content that you may have wanted to see by accident? How about the competitor’s website — obviously, no one wants you to switch to their competitor, so maybe one day someone will think “hey, how about not letting this website appear in their search?”. Although it sounds abstract today, this is not to say that it will never become a reality, especially as Shine’s CMO, Roi Carthy said “What we don’t do yet, and it’s more a matter of yet than anything else, is block native advertising”, which clearly means they will be moving in the direction of interfering with content itself soon enough.
Question 1: Is it legal?
This issue is debatable. Although Three claims that according to their lawyers, there is no problem with the legality of this deal, the introduction of the new EU Telecommunications Single Market Regulation might quickly change their view. According to the Article 3, Paragraph 3 of the above Regulation, “Providers of internet access services shall treat all traffic equally, when providing internet access services, without discrimination, restriction or interference, and irrespective of the sender and receiver, the content accessed or distributed, the applications or services used or provided, or the terminal equipment used.” Meaning that they will not be allowed to favour one type of content (non-ads) over another (ads). As the European Commission’s expert said “The rules do not foresee any exception for ad blocking”. It is possible that once this Regulation comes into full force, the deal between Three and Shine will become void, effectively meaning that network-level ad-blocking would be made illegal in the EU. We’ll have to wait and see.
Question 2: Is it safe?
The issue has been raised that your mobile contract is between you and the provider. In this scenario, Shine is effectively a third party. It might make consumers wary — why should they trust a third party with access to their browsing habits? Although it might seem harmless, if you look more closely, you realise that Three has a contract with both you and Shine, but your contract is only with Three. You may, therefore, lose control of how Three and Shine exchange your data. Which does sound a bit scary (Shine does, however, stress its security credentials and the fact that the company emerged on the premise of protecting people from malware)
Question 3: Does it impact Net neutrality?
Directly related to the issue of legality and more importantly, consumer control, is net neutrality — a principle that all content should be treated in the same manner, without disregarding any of it. Ad blocking is in direct opposition to the concept of net neutrality, as it treats content that is perceived to be advertising differently than content that it did not identify as such. Effectively, net neutrality is all about keeping the Internet democratic, with all the content that’s available retaining an equal standing.
Final thoughts…
At people.io — we’re certainly excited to see the growing awareness around the disruption that intrusive advertising can cause and look forward to seeing how Three and Shine build out their proposition.
Importantly, though, we believe net neutrality can and should be maintained in all cases. That’s why our users retain the ability to decide who can send adverts to them in the platform, when they can be sent and, most importantly, how their personal data is used to trigger them. We reward you for taking control and maintaining the principles of net neutrality.
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Written by Gabriela Grzywacz, people.io
