What Publishers need to know about Google Chrome’s Ad Blocker

Google chrome is the world’s most popular web browser with a market share of over 59%.[Source: Marketshare.com] Its default Ad blocker went live on February 15th.

Unlike other Adblock softwares, it is not going to block all the ads on the web. Instead, it will block spammy and intrusive ads that kill user experience.

The ad blocker aims to free the internet from all the low quality ads

The blocking of ads is in compliance with the research conducted by the Coalition of Better Ads, an organisation formed by leading international trade associations and companies involved in online media(including Facebook). The coalition conducted a research on a group of 40,000 people, on various user experience factors and defined a set of low standard ad formats for Desktop and mobile -

Low-standard Ad formats for Desktop -

• Pop-up Ads - Ads that pop-up and block the content in the page.
• Autoplaying video ads with sounds - Video ads that play sound without any user interaction.
• Prestitial Ads with countdown - Ads that appear before content of the page has loaded. They force the user to wait a number of seconds before they can dismiss the ad.
• Large sticky ads - Ones that stick to the bottom edge of a page, regardless of a user’s efforts to scroll.

Low - Standard Ad formats for mobiles -

• Ad Density more than 30% - Ads that take up more than 30% of the vertical height of a page.
• Flashing animated ads - Ones that animate and “flash” with rapidly changing background, text or colors
• Positional ads with countdown - These ads with countdown timers appear after the user follows a link. They force the user to wait a number of seconds before they can dismiss the ad.
• Full - screen scroller ads - These ads force a user to scroll through an ad that appears on top of content.
• Large sticky ads - Ads that stick to a side of a mobile page, regardless of a user’s efforts to scroll.
• Pop-up ads - Ones that pop-up and block the content in the page.
• Prestitial ads - Ads that appear before content of the page has loaded.
• Autoplaying video ads with sounds - Video ads that play sound without any user interaction.

Chrome will block all the ads on a web-page, if any of the above low format ads are found on it.

What can the publishers do to Prevent the Ad-Blocks?

You can do the following to safeguard your website from Ad blocks -

• Go to Google Ad experience report tool.
• Submit your website for review
• A sample of your web-pages gets tested for the better ads standards and will show the status of your website - Passed, failed or warning.
• If the status is failed or warning, it will point out the Ad violations and suggest ways to fix it.
• You can replace these ads with user friendly ones and re-submit your website again for review.

You can submit your website for manual review if it is again showing Ad violations. Two of the manual reviews will be done immediately. The third one will be done only after a gap of 30 days.

Is this Ad block Beneficial for Publishers?

Definitely yes. Why?

• A few good quality ads provide greater user experience, which in turn leads to better user engagement and retention.
• Ads will be of more value, with higher ad impressions, CTRs as well as cost per click. Many publishers got better results, when they cut down the number of ads and used a few high quality ones instead.
• Rising number of Adblock software (ones that block all the ads, regardless of its quality) users is a serious threat to Publishers income. But Ads itself is not the reason behind people using Adblock, 69% of the people were motivated by annoying ads. This chrome update will reduce the number of people using Ad block software, thus safeguarding publisher’s income in the long run.

“The default ad-blocker will pave way for a better web for both the publishers and users.”

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