Three UK to Launch Mobile Network Level Advert Blocking

Mobile operator Three UK has become one of the first providers in the country to announce the future roll-out of a new network-level ad blocking technology, which is the result of a collaboration with Shine Technologies that will focus upon tackling data hungry and overly intrusive adverts.

At present the operator has not revealed a lot about their plans or a time-scale for its supposedly “rapid roll-out,” although they do confirm that their intention is “not to eliminate mobile advertising“. Instead the aim is to “give customers more control, choice and greater transparency over what they receive,” which will be based around three goals.

3UK’s Three Principal Goals of Ad Blocking

1. That customers should not pay data charges to receive adverts. These should be costs borne by the advertiser.

2. That customers’ privacy and security must be fully protected. Some advertisers use mobile ads to extract and exploit data about customers without their knowledge or consent.

3. That customers should be entitled to receive advertising that is relevant and interesting to them, and not to have their data experience in mobile degraded by excessive, intrusive, unwanted or irrelevant adverts.

Most people would probably agree with the last two points, although the first one seems to be walking a difficult line between unrealistic expectations and opposing Net Neutrality policy. At this point it’s unclear whether Three UK expects advertisers to pay them money to have their adverts shown or if they’re merely using this as a reason to block certain adverts, such as those annoying auto-play video ads that ruin so many good sites and which can even crash your browser.

Tom Malleschitz, Chief Marketing Officer of Three UK, said:

“Irrelevant and excessive mobile ads annoy customers and affect their overall network experience. We don’t believe customers should have to pay for data usage driven by mobile ads. The industry has to work together to give customers mobile ads they want and benefit from.

These goals will give customers choice and significantly improve their ad experience.”

As usual there’s always a worry with leaving the definition of “irrelevant and excessive” adverts up to a commercial Internet provider, but we get the impression that Three UK’s approach may merely be to provide the tools and then allow customers to make their own choice. Sadly the sparse detail doesn’t help us to clarify.

No doubt Three UK will be cautious not to end up in a fight with the likes of Google, although usually the worst adverts have a tendency to come from smaller agencies with fewer quality standards and less regard for those who actually visit the websites where their promotions are shown.

It’s worth pointing out that one of the reasons why mobile operators are doing this is because very few mobile-based web browsers include good application-based blocking and so by offering such a solution they may well attract more subscribers. By comparison desktop users can access a much more sophisticated variety of blocking add-ons and extensions, thus there is less call for network-level blocking on that side of the fence.
Mind you Three UK isn’t the only mobile operator with an eye on network-level ad blocking, with EE (BT) also known to be working on a similar technology and no doubt others may follow.