Adblock Plus and parent company Eyeo are victorious in German courts once again, this time winning in three separate appeals by publishers RTL Interactive, ProSiebenSat.1 and Sddeutsche Zeitung. The appellate court in Munich, Germany upheld the previous rulings by Munich district court in each of the three cases against Adblock Plus. According to ZDNet, RTL Interactive and ProSiebenSat.1 have the option of taking their appeals to German’s highest court, the federal constitutional court of Karlsruhe.

Adblock Plus’s Ben Williams is understandably pleased with the results:

‘So the German courts once again decided 100 percent in support of consumers’ right to block ads and 100 percent in favor of Adblock Plus,’ said Williams in an August 17 blog post. ‘It really does seem that three is the magic number for Adblock Plus, as all three of these companies have sued-and-lost against Adblock Plus (Eyeo) before.’

‘The higher court recommended to the plaintiffs that they focus their energies on finding alternative business models. We agree – maybe they could look at Flattr,’ added Williams.

Flattr is a micropayment and microdonation system that Eyeo acquired earlier this year. The idea is that consumers can contribute money to Flattr and set a monthly budget to pay for content. Flattr uses a proprietary algorithm to distribute the ‘right amounts’ to the ‘right sites,’ so readers can seamlessly support journalism and other content without having to put much thought into it.  

In Williams’ post, he points out that these latest rulings contradict a prior ruling by a Cologne court last summer where the court sided with publisher Axel Springer. In the Axel Springer case, the court ruled that Adblock Plus can’t charge Axel Springer for whitelisting. While Williams’ may be pleased with the contradiction, this doesn’t change the Cologne court’s ruling. Adblock Plus has appealed that ruling, but we have not heard what the outcome is or if this is still in the appeals process. According to ZDNet, the Munich appellate court said Adblock Plus’s whitelisting policies were acceptable.

The appellate court said online publishers can take countermeasures against Adblock Plus, like denying access to readers who have an active adblocking extension in their browser, said ZDNet. Publishers like GQ, for example, have asked to readers to disable their adblocker, whitelist their site, subscribe, or make a micropayment for each article the reader wants to access. Forbes is another publisher who is blocking access to readers who use ad blockers.

Ad blocking has had a big impact on publishing with publishers losing tens of billions of dollars in ad revenue every year. Here are some key insights from PageFair’s 2017 Adblock Report which illustrate the magnitude of the issue:

• 11 percent of the global internet popular was blocking ads as of Dec. 2016.
• 615 million global devices were blocking ads as of Dec. 2016. 62 percent of those devices were mobile devices.
• Between Dec. 2015 and Dec. 2017, there was 30 percent in ad block usage.
• 74 percent of ad block users say they leave websites with ad block walls, like GQ.
• 77 percent of ad block users are willing to view some ad formats.

Insider Take:

The bottom line here is that publishers, advertisers and ad blocking companies like Adblock Plus have not found an effective way to work together to meet their goals. Companies like Adblock Plus want consumers to have control over their online experience, blocking annoying ads and protecting user privacy. Publishers, on the other hand, rely on advertising revenue to support their operations, yet they don’t want poor ad quality to detract from their reader’s online experience.

Adblock Plus and its Acceptable Ads initiative are one step toward the middle. IAB and its DEAL approach toward ad blocking solutions for publishers is another approach to ad blocking. We’re a long way from a solution that meets everyone’s needs. In the meantime, Adblock Plus and other ad blockers will continue to fight what they believe to be the good fight, and publishers will continue to fight back as they tweak their business models to soften the blow of revenue lost due to ad blockers.