Three has abandoned its ad blocking plans, following a one-week trial in June.

The UK mobile network operator had been working with Shine, which has been pushing its network-level ad blocking tech to operators around the globe since it first appeared last May.

Three marketing director Tom Malleschitz, speaking at Ad:tech in London, said “we don’t believe ad blocking is the solution”, despite the popularity of the June trial with customers, with 86 per cent saying they were satisfied in a survey.

The reason for the change of plans, then, seems to be the impact on Threes relationship with other brands. Malleschitz admitted the operators ad blocking announcement “pissed off” Google and Ofcom, among others, and it faced threats of “we want to ban all your customers on sites”.

The company has performed an about-turn in its approach, saying it wants to apply its marketing slogan when stuff sucks, make it right to the problems with digital advertising. Malleschitz emphasised the operators wealth of customer data for advertisers – which he described as “much better” than the likes of Google and Facebook, Marketing Week reported – and said it wanted to work, both with advertisers using its platform and as an advertiser itself, to create “something that is inspiring and relevant”.

This is, at least, in line with Threes originally stated aim with ad blocking. Back in February, a Three spokesperson told Mobile Marketing that its plans grew out of a desire to provide a better mobile experience for its customers, by delivering ads that are higher quality and less intrusive.

It is less clear how the operator now intends to tackle its other argument at the time, that its customers would save around 20 per cent of their data allowance each month by blocking ads.