Google’s Chrome will begin blocking all ads that don’t comply with what it calls ‘Better Ad Standards’ by early 2018. The Better Ad Standards is a set of rules that provide “clear, public, data-driven guidance” for the industry. The updates will even block ads served through Google’s own networks and they will apply to both the mobile and desktop platforms.
The search engine browser will come pre-installed with this new ad-blocking technology to automatically filter ads that are considered too annoying or burdensome. Publishers not meeting these new standards for creating good advertising experiences will now have to fall in line if they want their ads to pass through the filter.
In keeping with its methodical approach to new developments, Google will provide a tool to help publishers adopt the changes and implement them in their desktop and mobile websites that need to meet the new Ad standards. Publishers who implement these standards on their websites will effectively avoid the risk of losing any digital ad revenue in the new environment. The tool known as Ad Experience Report, will explain to publishers, via screen shots and videos, how the rules relate to their websites. It will show how the search engine identifies all Ad content that fall in the “annoying ad experiences” category and how they can be fixed to fit into the new standards. Publishers will also be provided with a list of ads by the Ad Experience Report, fitting the Better Ad Standards that they can use instead of those that need to be reworked or recreated.
Sridhar Ramaswamy, svp of ads and commerce at Google wrote in a blog post recently – “The vast majority of online content creators fund their work with advertising, which means they want the ads that run on their sites to be compelling, useful and engaging ones that people actually want to see and interact with. But the reality is, it’s far too common that people encounter annoying, intrusive ads on the web—like the kind that blare music unexpectedly, or force you to wait 10 seconds before you can see the content on the page. We believe these changes will ensure all content creators, big and small, can continue to have a sustainable way to fund their work with online advertising.”