Three UK announces next steps in plans to improve mobile advertising

We
believe the current mobile advertising model is broken* and our customers are
becoming increasingly frustrated by irrelevant and intrusive adverts which use
up their data allowance and can invade their privacy by tracking their
behaviour without their knowledge or consent.

We
want to improve the experience for our customers with our three principle goals
in mobile advertising which we announced in February.

1.   
That
customers should not pay data charges to receive adverts. These costs should be
borne by the advertiser.

2.   
That
customers’ privacy and security must be fully protected. Some advertisers use
mobile ads to extract and exploit data about customers without their knowledge
or consent.

3.   
That
customers should be entitled to receive advertising that is relevant and
interesting to them, and not to have their data experience in mobile degraded
by excessive, intrusive, unwanted or irrelevant adverts.

Something
needs to change and we believe that by working with the advertising industry,
brands and publishers, that we can create more relevant, less intrusive adverts
that increase consumer satisfaction.

The
trial will test the ability of the technology to filter out advertising that
damages our customers’ mobile browsing experience without impacting their network
experience.

Three UK will
be contacting customers to ask them to agree to take part in the 24-hour trial
which is scheduled to take place during the week commencing 13 June. Customers
who choose to take part can sign up via the Three UK website.

Tom
Malleschitz, Chief Marketing Officer, Three UK, said: “This is the next step in
our journey to make mobile ads better for our customers.

“The current ad
model is broken. It frustrates customers, eats up their data allowance and can
jeopardise their privacy. Something needs to change.

“We can only
achieve change by working with all stakeholders in the advertising industry –
customers, advertising networks and publishers – to create a new form of
advertising that is better for all parties.”  

ENDS
–

*44%
of UK adults are planning to use an ad-blocker in the next six months,
according to KPMG in April 2016