Adblock Plus Wins Against Publishers in Germany (Again!)

Adblock Plus, one of the most popular ad blocking tool, has been victorious again in a Munich court, versus publishers. The publishers demanded that the parent company of Adblock Plus, Eyeo should not be allowed legally to block ads on their sites.

German broadcasters RTL Interactive and Pro 7/Sat 1's lawsuit said users should not be able to block ads on their websites. It added that Adblock Plus should not be able to offer its Acceptable Ads Policy, whereby large publishers have to adhere to a series of standards and sometimes pay hefty fees in order to be white-listed from its blocking service, Business Insider noted.

The new ruling comes a month after Adblock Plus was victorious in a court in Hamburg against German publishers Zeit Online and Handelsblatt who had challenged Eyeo's right to accept ads from the web.

This is the fourth time publishers have brought Eyeo in the court and every time got defeated.

 "Ad blocking is a symptom of bad ads. Newspaper ads, magazine ads, and TV there is a level of acceptance to a degree. But these transferred one-by-one over to the digital space, and that didn't work out so well. Click-through-rates and the money people were getting back from impressions fell under a while. And the response was to just make more ads," said Ben Williams, Adblock Plus operations and communications manager, according to Business Insider.