Google will be rolling out Chrome support for the Better Ads Standards within the next couple of months; a move that may affect a large number of websites. For the most part, the company’s web browser will be tweaked to block Google ads on sites that fall short of the newly imposed standards.
The Better Ads Standards are a set of guidelines designed to clamp down on excessive advertising. Google acknowledges that this behaviour has a negative impact on user experience, and contributes to the growing use ad blockers.
Improving the quality of advertising is not necessarily a sign that Google is on the side of the regular consumer. Instead, the goal of the Better Ads Standards is to provide an environment where people feel comfortable turning their ad blockers off. Which, in turn, will translate into more revenue for content creators. In other words, Google still wants to help people sell you things.
Announced in June, the standards list “pop-up ads, prestitial ads, ads with density greater than 30%, flashing animated ads, auto-play video ads with sound, poststitial ads with countdown, full-screen scrollover ads, and large sticky ads” as falling within its purview. Which means that sites using these methods will be up for review when the standards are imposed.
Those that fail will see their ads blocked by Google Chrome, although the average consumer probably wouldn’t even notice the difference.
Websites have already been told about this change, and have the next two months to get with the programme or potentially see their revenue plummet. That said, we fully expect some teething problems in the first couple of months; at least while Google sorts out the last few bugs in the system.
[Source: Google Developers Blog]
