EE mulls mobile ad blocking

Over the past year or so, a few connectivity providers have mooted the idea of network-level ad blocking, but EE, which has some 27 million customers, is the most high-profile company to publicly state that it’s actively investigating the possibility.

EE is in a hard position if it decides to offer ad-blocking services, since it would have to decide what adverts get the green light if it makes an “acceptable ads” policy like AdBlock Plus.

EE is considering stemming the influence advertisers have on mobile phone users in the UK.

“For EE, this is not about ad blocking, but about starting an important debate around customer choice”, said Swantee, in the Telegraph report.

“This is an important debate that needs to happen soon”.

Ad-blockers are becoming a big thing in the mobile world, and of course, a lot of publications that rely on those adverts are getting anxious.

Ad blockers already take between 20 to 40 percent of the profitability away from ad-focused businesses on desktop, and that number is rising on mobile with the introduction of ad-blocking on iOS.

The third strand is the one directly referenced by Swantee: growing user irritation at increasingly intrusive ads on mobile devices – exacerbated by the added annoyance of mobile data being consumed by adverts a user may not even want to see, and slower page load times thanks to sites larded with ad tracking tech. This list could easily become a product for EE, letting the carrier broker deals with companies in exchange for advertising space on mobile.

Swantee notes that not all ads are bad, but when they are they can truly destroy one’s experience. Usually, only those ads are blocked which are considered intrusive and which do not let users read articles or watch videos by covering the entire display.