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.

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.

Great Firewall

[Architect_sasyr]

So... China bans the Great Firewall?

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.