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Google Chrome will soon begin blocking all ads (including those served by Google) on websites that repeatedly include certain "non-compliant" (annoying) ads:
In June, Google revealed that Chrome will stop showing all ads (including those owned or served by Google) on websites that display non-compliant ads "starting in early 2018." Now the company has committed to a date: Chrome's built-in ad-blocker will start working on February 15, 2018.
[...] Google this year joined the Coalition for Better Ads, a group that offers specific standards for how the industry should improve ads for consumers — full-page ad interstitials, ads that unexpectedly play sound, and flashing ads are all banned. Yesterday, the coalition announced the Better Ads Experience Program, which provides guidelines for companies using the Better Ads Standards to improve users' experience with online ads.
[...] The hope is that Chrome's built-in ad blocker will stymie the usage of other third-party ad blockers that block all ads outright. Google has noted in the past that ad blockers that do not discriminate hurt publishers that create free content (like VentureBeat) and threaten "the sustainability of the web ecosystem." Despite the fact that Google makes the vast majority of its revenue from ads, the company sees its selective ad blocker as the natural evolution of pop-up blockers.
Also at Engadget, Variety, and 9to5Google.
Previously: Google Preparing to Filter "Unacceptable Ads" in 2018
(Score: 5, Insightful) by requerdanos on Wednesday December 20 2017, @01:39AM (5 children)
Well, their recommendations [betterads.org] tend towards the reasonable. For Desktop platforms, for example, no pop-ups, no auto-playing video with sound, no prestitial ads with countdown (like Forbes), and no large sticky ads.
Why not? because these ads "rank lowest across a range of user experience factors, and... are most highly correlated with an increased propensity for consumers to adopt ad blockers."
In other words, they are annoying and make reasonable people so annoyed that they actually want to block ads.
If you advertise, it is good to eliminate these practices because they make more people block ads, thus making your ads invisible and therefore ineffective.
If you look at ads sometimes, it is good to eliminate those practices because they are an obnoxious plague on the senses and your universe will be significantly better without them.
So, it looks like better ads standards are a good start.
They don't take into account things like ad networks serving malware (which could happen even with otherwise inoffensive-looking ads), and they split hairs to a confusing degree (annoying blinking ads on mobile are forbidden, but on desktop are okay--not sure I agree there), but they are better than the advertising industry's previous positions (such as research and development into how ads can be made more sleazy and annoying to increase click conversions, for example).
Google being a heavy hitter in the advertising world and endorsing the "don't be annoying" advertising standards so closely seems to me to be possibly a good thing.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by mhajicek on Wednesday December 20 2017, @05:38AM (2 children)
I would think all auto playing video should be nixed. That's my bandwidth you're commandeering.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Wednesday December 20 2017, @05:20PM (1 child)
You hit on a good point there that exposes something about the standards... Auto-playing video is bad, bad, bad. But - not specifically annoying enough to be "the absolute worst" experience that would send normal people screaming for something to block the annoyingness.
It takes someone with a level of knowledge and sophistication (the bar is pretty low for that) to connect that little silent film with "Muh [Mega|Giga]bytes".
It seems the standards are written to allow "get away with everything you can, but don't outright piss them off".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 20 2017, @06:11PM
Is that not how the US government works?
None of these tactics are new. The difference is that the behaviors are old--the millenials these are mostly targeted at don't have that experience to know this yet.
Eventually they will wisen up, but then next generation will fall victim to the next test of how much the "entity$" can get away before "customer$/resource$" puts a stop to it. No amount of education teaches a person that wet paint is wet, don't touch it. They do it anyway, and they'll punch the monkey in VR when it comes down to it.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 20 2017, @02:41PM (1 child)
Funny how easy it is to misread "cl" as "d" in this context ;-)
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday December 20 2017, @04:14PM
Yep. I read it that way and had to do a double take.
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