Dive Brief:

• Three Group, a British wireless carrier, is partnering with Shine Technologies to block in-app and mobile browser ads at the network level.
• The company said in a statement, “Customers should not pay data charges to receive adverts. These should be costs borne by the advertiser.”
• The deal will impact Three Italy and Three UK, and will be Shine’s second and third implementation of network-level ad blocking. Last year its first deal was with Digicel, a Caribbean wireless company.

Dive Insight:

Shine CMO Roi Carthy told Ad Exchanger, "There’s this notion that carriers don’t care about their consumers, but we find that the thing they want to sell isn’t a ring tone or a brand, it’s actual user value."

By blocking ads at the network level, Three Group will be able to control ads that do get served to its customers, potentially adding a new revenue source for its business.

"Irrelevant and excessive mobile ads annoy customers and affect their overall network experience. We don’t believe customers should have to pay for data usage driven by mobile ads. The industry has to work together to give customers mobile ads they want and benefit from," Tom Malleschitz, chief marketer for Three UK, said in a statement.

Shine made waves last November after taking out a full page ad in the Financial Times featuring the iconic image of boxer Muhammad Ali standing over a defeated Sonny Liston with a tough message for the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB): "The @iab knew we could block. Now they know we can punch, too."

Around the same time, IAB President Randall Rothenberg told Business Insider Shine is "funded by foreign billionaire investors, for the express purpose of stealing money from advertisers and publishers and diverting it into the pockets of giant cell phone carriers."

As the conversation around ad blocking gets more heated, players from both sides of the debate will need to work to find viable solutions. The IAB has even called on the ad community to put consumers first when thinking up their creatives, rather than focusing on revenue.