As of February 15th Google have started automatically blocking intrusive ads within its Chrome browser for users of the latest version of Chrome on Windows, Mac OS, Linux and Android.
It is important to highlight first and foremost that this update is not designed to block all ads on Google Chrome indiscriminately, only those deemed ‘annoying’ and ‘intrusive’. Rahul Roy-Chowdhury, vice president for Chrome stated that:
“A big source of frustration is annoying ads: video ads that play at full blast or giant pop-ups where you can’t seem to find the exit icon. These ads are designed to be disruptive and often stand in the way of people using their browsers for their intended purpose — connecting them to content and information. It’s clear that annoying ads degrade what we all love about the web.”
Unlike traditional ad blockers, Google will inform sites that contravene the Coalition for Better Ads (CBA) guidelines, that they have 30 days to rectify the situation and only then block ads from sites that persist.
Among the list of banned ad types is anything that pops up, makes noise, blocks the screen or won’t go away. But it also includes sites with an advert density of over 30%.
All Response Media viewpoint
We are all for removing intrusive and disruptive ads from the web, not only do these type of formats give display advertising a bad name, but if publishers aren’t adhering to CBA guidelines it will start to impact channel performance. We will be closely monitoring our display cost per thousands (CPMs) over the coming weeks as with more low-quality ad real estate starting to be removed from the market it is possible that we may see slight CPM inflation, however, we are confident that if that is the case it will be offset by improved visibility and engagement metrics.
Finally to ensure that we as an agency are doing everything we can to improve the effectiveness of our clients’ display advertising spend, we partner with two different technology suppliers – MOAT and Adloox. We are committed to ensuring that we, and our clients, have access to the most comprehensive ad viewability, attention and engagement metrics to inform our buying decisions and ultimately channel performance.
