China Bans Ad Blocking (adexchanger.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Two weeks ago, China released its first ever set of digital ad regulations that impacted Chinese market leaders like Baidu and Alibaba. "But hidden among (the new regulations) is language that would seem to all but ban ad blocking," wrote Adblock Plus (ABP) operations manager Ben Williams in a blog post Wednesday. The new regulations prohibit "the use of network access, network devices, applications, and the disruption of normal advertising data, tampering with or blocking others doing advertising business (or) unauthorized loading the ad." There is also a clause included that addresses tech companies that "intercept, filter, cover, fast-forward and [impose] other restrictions" on online ad campaigns. ABP general counsel Kai Recke said in an email to AdExchanger that the Chinese State Administration for Industry and Commerce (SAIC) has much more control over the market than its otherwise equal U.S. counterpart, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). "After all it looks like the Chinese government tries to get advertising more under their control and that includes that they want to be the only ones to be allowed to remove or alter ads," said Recke. "Ad-block users are a distinct audience and they require a distinct strategy and ways to engage them," said ABP CEO Till Faida at AdExchanger's Clean Ads I/O earlier this year. "They have different standards they've expressed for accessing them, and advertising has to reflect that."

Comments

I think I speak for all America when I say...

[Nova Express]

...bite me, China!

That's OK

[penguinoid]

I don't use an adblocker, I use a scam/malware remover, bandwidth saver, page quality enhancer, and internet speed enhancer. But by a strange coincidence, it is called AdBlock.

Well, I never thought I'd say this, EVER...

[behrooz0az]

I think APK hosts file generator may actually work here.

All You Need to Know

[brwski]

This tell you all you need to know â" ads are now officially surveillance tools. Why they'd admit such a thing is unclear. Continue to block, block, block away.

The real reason

[Anonymous Coward]

So is this just a tacit admission that AdBlockers are inadvertently screening out some of the government surveillance tools?

Great Firewall

[Architect_sasyr]

So... China bans the Great Firewall?

If the TPP is past, this will come to America

[Nyder]

If the TPP is past, Corporations will be able to sue Governments for getting in the way of their making profit. So you can damn well bet that the advertisement networks will sue to get any type of ad blocking banned. And they will be backed by most other corporations also, so ya, this will be coming to America.

Malware creators everywhere rejoice

[The MAZZTer]

We may very well see an uptick in legitimate site's ads used to deliver malware because of this.

Re:Money Talks Again.

[amicusNYCL]

if ads == money

There's a false equivalence if I've ever seen one. If that's your premise, and your premise is false, then the rest of your post doesn't matter.

Ads are not the same as money. Ads are also malware distribution vectors, privacy invaders, resource hogs, a waste of screen space, etc. Money is none of those things. If ad distributors wanted to actually take responsibility and clean up their industry, fine, we would be having a different conversation. But they have proven for decades that they don't want to do those things, so this is the conversation we're having.

That's Insane!

[BrendaEM]

Why would a communist country ban a program defeats a device of capitalism?

In Communist China...

[sonamchauhan]

...Ads block you!

"Take that, you capitalist running-dogs!"

Re:When a pitiful blowhard like you

[amicusNYCL]

I'll just quote myself.

He'll still post some spam and claim victory in a game where he's the only one playing

Thanks for proving me right.

Re:Funny I blew your ass clean away here, lol

[amicusNYCL]

Yeah, wow, you really showed me, APK. You're truly a mental heavyweight of debate and argument, what with your endless repeating of the same tired bullshit. I didn't learn that tactic, that must only be taught in the master classes.

I dusted you

Pointing out that an application uses SQLite and only has a 32-bit version is "dusted". Learn something new every day I guess.

You're still a spamming troll though, that much isn't going to change. And anyone else is still flat-out stupid for running any executable delivered by a spammer. We all know what the first rule is when dealing with spammers, don't we?

Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to go nurse all of these just awful wounds that you've inflicted on me. I just can't tell you how much I'm suffering over here.