Recent reports suggest European mobile operators are planning to install ad-blocking software on their networks.
According to the Financial Times report, one unnamed European carrier has already installed the ad-blocking software and plans to activate it by the end of this year.
As per the report, the mobile operators have installed software from Israeli ad-blocking firm Shine in their data centers which would help them filter out ads and thus reduce the bandwidth usage.
In an interview with the Financial Times, Roi Carthy, chief marketing officer at Shine, said “Tens of millions of mobile subscribers around the world will be opting in to ad blocking by the end of the year.
“If this scales, it could have a devastating impact on the online advertising industry.”
An executive at a European carrier told the Times that it and several peers are planning to start blocking ads by the end of the year and might opt to introduce a plan known as “the bomb” which will specifically target Google. “The bomb” would prevent Google’s ads from working on mobile devices in an attempt to force the US tech giant to give up a share of its $60 billion revenues.
Commenting on the report, Google argued that such a move by mobile operators would be unfeasible saying “People pay for mobile internet packages so they can access the apps, video streaming, webmail and other services they love, many of which are funded by ads.
“Google and other web companies invest heavily in developing these services and in the behind-the-scenes infrastructure to deliver them.”
