Ad Blocker Shine Provokes IAB with Full Page Ad

shine ft adIsraeli ad blocking firm Shine has been a figure of controversy ever since it announced its plan to enable operators to block every single mobile ad delivered over their networks, but now the company is actively courting attention with a provocative full page at in the Financial Times.

The ad features the iconic image of Muhammad Ali standing over a knocked-out Sonny Liston and directly addresses the US Interactive Advertising Bureau, reading “The @iab knew we could block. Now they know we can punch, too.”

The ad also includes a URL that leads to a page on the companys website featuring three recent quotes from prominent ad executives including Sridhar Ramaswamy, vice president of ads & commerce at Google, addressing the issue of ad blocking and seemingly admitting that the industry has failed the needs of normal consumers.

“The fact is that ad tech brought about its own inevitable demise by coming to depend on dirty revenue generated through intrusive practices that abuse consumers and defraud advertising businesses,” said Shine in their statement accompanying the quotes. “Digital advertising as weve come to know and loathe will go by the wayside, with the end of the deplorable tactics that have defined digital advertising for a generation.”

The IAB responded to the ad with a statement to Business Insider by CEO and president Randall Rothenberg, who said that “all the advertising in the world wont disguise the fact that 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.

“Its business model has been attacked by government regulators as a breach of the net neutrality rules that underpin the free internet,” said Rothenberg. “But I hope they buy millions of dollars of more advertising before they die.”

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