What Happened
Google plans to take on online ads that cause subpar user experiences by adding a built-in ad-blocker to its Chrome browser, the most popular web browser in the world. The ad-blocker will target “unacceptable ads” as defined by the Coalition for Better Ads, a online ad regulation group that Google is a member of. The Coalition’s Better Ads Standard, released last month, calls out pop-ups, autoplay video ads with sound, interstitial ads with countdowns, and large “sticky” ads as “below the threshold of consumer acceptability.” In addition, Google is reportedly also considering blocking all ads on sites which have ads that don’t meet those standards.
What Brands Need To Do
We first called out the trend of Ad Avoidance – subpar online ad experiences and increasingly ad-free options are driving online users to actively avoid ads – back in 2015 when ad-blockers start to take off among Internet users, which was partly trigger by Apple allowing ad-blocking extensions in its Safari browser on iOS devices. This upcoming Chrome ad-blocker will only serve to accelerate the mainstream adoption of ad-blockers, further pushing ad-servers and publishers to optimize their ad experiences on site. For brands, this should be an opportunity to start exploring newer digital ad formats that are better integrated into the user experiences, such as in-feed social ads or branded content.
Source: Wall Street Journal
