Dive Brief:
- German media company Axel Springer has a background of fighting ad-blocking tech and is now taking iOS 9 ad-blocking app Blockr to court to stop its development and distribution.
- The final ruling on the case isn’t expected until Dec. 10, but in an early hearing the momentum seemed to be on the side of the mobile app.
- Along with Business Insider, in which it just bought a controlling take for $343 million, Axel Springer publishes newspapers Bild and Die Welt.
Dive Insight:
Publishers have been getting hit by ad-blocking technology. German media giant Axel Springer, known for actively battling the software, is having its WELTN24 subsidiary take ad-block app Blockr to court.
Its latest move comes after mobile ad-blocking tech became all the more real with the release of Apple’s iOS 9. According to Axel Springer’s legal representation, it wants to stop Blockr’s developers from offering, advertising, maintaining and distributing the app.
The publisher provided TechCrunch with a statement on the legal action, “Axel Springer SE is demonstrating its position regarding ad blocking in various legal initiatives: Ad blocking interferes with the constitutionally protected position of publishing houses and endangers the refinancing – and hence, in the long run, the existence – of professional online journalism. We are currently not commenting on the number and status of ongoing legal proceedings.”
In other recent ad-blocking news, Yahoo took a limited in scope, but drastic, step of blocking some of its web mail users from accessing their accounts if they were actively using ad-blocking software. The move predictably earned Yahoo some significant pushback from its users on social media.