French publishers join Swedish 'Block Party' to pester ad refuseniks

French publishers are joining the “block party” - by taking aggressive collective action to thwart ad-blockers.

In August, around 80 to 90 per cent of Swedish publishers will participate in a co-ordinated campaign to nag readers using ad blocking software that they really shouldn’t use ad blocking software.

Le Figaro suggests (Translation) that each publisher chooses their own form of inconveniencing their reader or user. Participating publishers include the Altice Media Group, Le Monde, M6 web, RTLNet, Deezer and others.

Commenting on the French action, the UK’s Internet Advertising Bureau noted that: "Ad blocking is rife in France, so this collective action by news publishers is no surprise. Ad blocking is a genuine threat to the free availability of quality online journalism, and we’re seeing more and more UK media owners take similar action.

“ITV.com and Channel 4oD were amongst the first to deny access to ad blocking consumers, and now City AM, The Telegraph and Mirror Group have followed suit with their own tests.”

The French initiative is co-ordinated by the group Geste.

Adblock software maintainers have already begun to react, as you can see here on EasyList's bang-up-to0-ate "anti adblock filters" list.

First users blocked ads, then publishers blocked users blocking ads, then users blocked the anti-blocking blockers.

It's turtles all the way down.®