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You shouldn't be paying for mobile ads (please buy our software)

Ad-blocking company selflessly campaigns for the blocking of ads

Israeli ad-blocking company Shine has climbed on to the moral high ground, taking out an advertisement in the Financial Times calling on the mobile industry to block mobile ads.

Roi Carthy, Shine’s chief marketing officer told El Reg: “Any rational person can agree that we should not be subsidising Google, Facebook and so on.” He calls the presence of ads on mobes “pollution” and that his company believes that “The right to block ads is a consumer right”.

“We believe that the consumer not only has the right to block ads, but they should not be paying for it," he added.

To this end, the company wants the data mobile ads are using to be zero-rated and has set up a website with a similar message to the newspaper ad, on which it says:

Shine calls upon the GSMA leadership to take immediate action and work with its membership to expedite a position on the matter.

We also call on mobile operator CEOs to publicly express their pursuit of this act of consumer protection and to support those who champion such ideas as zero-rating policies, which can be implemented by carriers and ad tech providers to prevent subscribers from being charged for the growing volume of data being consumed by mobile ads.

Carthy told us that when the consumer was on an unlimited data contract, the emphasis shifted to one of saving money for the carrier, but such tariffs were rare and his company was less worried about costs when customers roamed on to Wi-Fi.

He also said it was down to publishers who rely on advertising for funding to find alternative business models.

Shine does have its software deployed on some mobile networks, but Carthy said the announcement of who was using it was down to the networks and that he was not able to tell us.

The services Shine sells to mobe networks include monitoring of advertising so that the networks can see which advertisers are slurping data.

A GSMA spokesman told The Register: "As an industry association, the GSMA does not get involved in the negotiation of commercial agreements between operators and third parties, as this would violate competition law. Further, the GSMA is not actively involved in any projects concerning the development or implementation of online ad blocking software. The GSMA supports initiatives that provide consumers with more transparency and control over the privacy of their personal data."

We have contacted the UK mobile networks and will update this story if we receive a response. ®

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