Axel Springer Goes After iOS 9 Ad Blockers In New Legal Battlle (techcrunch.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Germany's Axel Springer, owner of newspapers like Bild and Die Welt, is pursuing legal action against the developers of Blockr, an ad blocker for iOS 9. Techcrunch reports: "In October, Axel Springer forced visitors to Bild to turn off their ad blockers or pay a monthly fee to continue using the site. Earlier this month, the publisher reported the success of this measure, saying that the proportion of readers using ad blockers dropped from 23% to the single digits when faced with the choice to turn off the software or pay. 'The results are beyond our expectations,' said Springer chief exec Mathias Döpfner at the time. 'Over two-thirds of the users concerned switched off their adblocker.' He also noted that the Bild.de website received an additional 3 million visits from users who could now see the ads in the first two weeks of the experiment going live."

Comments

Don't evolve your business model

[OrangeTide]

Litigate instead!

Re:Don't evolve your business model

[Mashiki]

Well, the lame excuse about intrusive ads does not apply here, according to TFS. Either pay a subscription fee and eliminate ads or view ads. I guess most freeloaders don't want to pay for the subscription or view ads.

Sure it does. A lot of people wouldn't mind the ads if they're not going to hijack their machine and would turn off adblocking software. But the content that said sites offer, do not promote a persons desire to pay for it. Especially since large numbers of news services simply use wire content to fill out their pages. That site in question doesn't offer any unique content that people can't find elsewhere.

The business model is broken, because companies don't want to take responsibility for the ads. And users are refusing ads, because they're the most common source of machine hijacking.

Re: Don't evolve your business model

[Anonymous Coward]

Precious little, in a while. There's more and more support to the idea that any device to be connected to the internet will have to be"audited" for "potentially harmful" software and "certified" by "authorities". I know it sounds unacceptable right now but give it time and everybody will simply shrug and say "it's for our own safety and besides, what can we do?"

Lying with statistics

[complete loony]

the proportion of readers using ad blockers dropped from 23% to the single digits when faced with the choice to turn off the software or pay ... Over two-thirds of the users concerned switched off their adblocker.

Did they? Or did they simply not come back?

Of course with the developer tools built into browsers these days, it only takes a few clicks to delete the nag layer and get to the underlying content. I wonder how they count me in their statistics?

Re:Speaking of crappy ads (paid posts)

[Maxo-Texas]

ha ha! I see your game... a clever new way to get people with adblockers to look at adds!

Well! You'll not fool me! I'm not a cat!

I'll be releasing "xxxJohnBoyxxx (565205) blocker next week!

required reading

[Tom]

What you need to know about BILD:

It's the most popular (by far) newspaper "for the lower classes" in Germany. It is massively influential on public opinion, and thus required reading for politicians and such. Several german chancellors are known to have checked the BILD headlines first thing in the morning to know what the people will wake up to.

It is also rumours to be funded by the CIA, at least during its early, post-war years, and to this day is fanatically pro-american, conservative and anti-communist.

With that in mind, you understand who the readership is and why they are more likely than, say, the /. crowd, to turn off their adblockers.