Google has joined the Coalition for Better Ads, a groups that offers specific standard for how the industry should improve ads for consumer — full-page ad interstitial, ads that unexpectedly play sound, and flashing ads are all banned. Chrome will stop showing ad (including those owned or served by Google) on website that are not compliant with the Better Ads Standard “starting in early 2018.”
In other words, Google will use Chrome to cut off ad revenue from website that serve low-quality ads, as deemed by the aforementioned standard. That means the browser’s built-in ad blocker will be taking an all-or-nothing approach: All ads blocked if one ad doesn’t follow the standard or all ads allowed if all the ads follow the standard.
The hope is that this will stymie the usage of add-ons and extension that block all ads outrights. Google acknowledges that this kind of ad blocker hurt publishers that create free content (like VentureBeat) “and threaten the sustainability of the web ecosystems.” Interestingly, despite the fact that Google makes the vast majority of its revenue from adverts, the company says it sees this type of selective browser ad blocker as the natural evolution of pop-up blocker.
But the Chrome ad blocker coming next year isn’t the only thing Google Inc is doing. The company is also launching the Ad Experience Reports, a tool that provides screenshots and videos of annoying ad experiences to help sites find and fix issue. Developers can re-submit their site for reviews once the problematic ad experiences have been addressed. For a full list of ads to use instead, Google recommend that publishers visit its new best practices guide.
