One of Germany's largest online publications, the tabloid Bild, forces adblock users to pay for using their website. If visitors on the Bild website use an adblocker they can opt to either pay €2.99 ($3.40) a month or whitelist the site to continue to read the site.
"Users who don't disable their adblocker or who don't pay, are no longer able to view content on Bild.de", according to publisher of the website Axel Springer.
Adblockers allow users to block advertisements on websites. Since a while adblockers are no longer exclusive to desktop browsers but also available on Apple's mobile browser Safari.
It's estimated that about 200 million users worldwide make use of an ad blocker this year, which is 40% more than last year. More than 30% of the German internet users uses an adblocker.
Website owners miss income when users block advertisements. This year about 22 billion dollar is lost due adblocking, according to a report from Pagefair and Adobe.
Axel Springer previously tried to take action against the developer of the popular adblocker Adblock Plus with lawsuits. According to the publisher the Adblock Plus software violates anti-competitive and copyright laws. A court in Hamburg rejected the complaints.
