Google is planning to clean up the web by launching its long-rumoured Chrome ad-blocker early next year.
The tech giant will stop showing ads on websites that feature too many annoying ads, including autoplay videos and those that interfere with what the user is trying look at.
Google has warned publishers to prepare for the change and is issuing a tool to help them check if their ads are in violation of the new guidelines or not.
"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," explains Sridhar Ramaswamy, Senior VP for ads and commerce at Google, in a blog post.
“We believe online ads should be better”.
While Google hasn’t officially confirmed a timeline for the new ad-blocker, it has briefed publishers on the change and told them they have six months to prepare, reports The Wall Street Journal.
Chrome will stop showing ads (including those owned or served by Google) on websites that are not compliant with a new set of ad standards, reportedly starting in early 2018. The filter will work on both desktop and mobile browsers and will still allow ads that meet the new guidelines.
Google has introduced the Ad Experience Report - a tool to help publishers identify ‘bad’ ads and fix the issues to avoid having their ads blocked in future.
As a further incentive for publishers, Google’s Funding Choices enables them to show a customised message to visitors using an ad blocker. This invites them to either enable ads on their site or pay for a pass that removes all ads on that site. This feature is currently in beta in the UK, North America, Germany, Australia and New Zealand and will roll out to other countries later in the year.
Google wants to make using the web a better experience. Intrusive ads lead many people to use ad-blockers that block out everything, not just the annoying ads. Obviously this is bad for businesses that rely on online ad revenue, including Google and, of course, WIRED.
In 2016, advertising was Google’s greatest source of revenue at $79.4 billion. As the ad-blocking industry continues to grow, the search giant has shown an increasing interest in helping curtail its impact, and it already reportedly pays millions a year to be part of the acceptable ads list that popular free tool Adblock Plus has drawn up.
Read more: The web is being misused: Opera's founder on why Google tracking should be banned
In the UK, a YouGov survey recently found that 22 per cent of adults use ad-blocking tools in 2016, but 24 per cent of people switched ad-blockers off because it stopped them accessing certain content.
An eMarketer report predicts that rates will rise to 30 per cent by the end of 2017 and become an "epidemic", partly based on the rapid rise in users in recent years. In 2014, only 9.5 per cent used the tools, with that figure more than doubling by 2016.
Google joined the Coalition For Better Ads industry group in order to tackle the problem. The group recently issued the Better Ads Standards, providing clear guidelines on how the industry can improve the ad experience.
Using empirical data and consumer input, The Better Ads Standards has identified various types of ads that fall below the acceptable threshold. The list was based on the feedback of 25,000 consumers rating 104 different types of ad experiences.
As expected, these include pop-up ads, auto-playing video ads with sound, interstitials with countdowns that take up the whole screen and large ‘sticky’ ads that cling to the side of the screen while the user scrolls.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
