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Chrome's Ad Blocker Will Go Global On July 9 (venturebeat.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from VentureBeat: Google today announced that Chrome's ad blocker is expanding across the globe starting on July 9, 2019. As with last year's initial ad blocker rollout, the date is not tied to a specific Chrome version. Chrome 76 is currently scheduled to arrive on May 30 and Chrome 77 is slated to launch on July 25, meaning Google will be expanding the scope of its browser's ad blocker server-side. Google last year joined the Coalition for Better Ads, a group that offers specific standards for how the industry should improve ads for consumers.
In February, Chrome started blocking ads (including those owned or served by Google) on websites that display non-compliant ads, as defined by the coalition. When a Chrome user navigates to a page, the browser's ad filter checks if that page belongs to a site that fails the Better Ads Standards. If so, network requests on the page are checked against a list of known ad-related URL patterns and any matches are blocked, preventing ads from displaying on the page. Because the Coalition for Better Ads announced this week that it is expanding its Better Ads Standards beyond North America and Europe to cover all countries, Google is doing the same. In six months, Chrome will stop showing all ads on sites in any country that repeatedly display "disruptive ads."
In February, Chrome started blocking ads (including those owned or served by Google) on websites that display non-compliant ads, as defined by the coalition. When a Chrome user navigates to a page, the browser's ad filter checks if that page belongs to a site that fails the Better Ads Standards. If so, network requests on the page are checked against a list of known ad-related URL patterns and any matches are blocked, preventing ads from displaying on the page. Because the Coalition for Better Ads announced this week that it is expanding its Better Ads Standards beyond North America and Europe to cover all countries, Google is doing the same. In six months, Chrome will stop showing all ads on sites in any country that repeatedly display "disruptive ads."
Do those "standards" include websites not showing ads that originate from a network, or contain content, not under their control?
No. The standards ban eight distinct ad formats deemed unacceptably annoying in tests:
- pop-ups (other than exit intent pop-ups)
- autoplaying audio (other than preroll before relevant video)
- vertical ad density over 30 percent of article space
- sticky ad taller than 30 percent of the scrolling area
- prestitials (with countdown on desktop or at all on mobile)
- postitials with countdown
- animated ads that include flashing elements
- screen-height ads that appear as a float rather than inline, thereby pausing scrolling of the article behind it (a format that I haven't personally seen in the wild)
They do not discern whether the ads are served by the publisher or by a third party, nor whether serving them relies on surveiling the viewing habits of each visitor across numerous unrelated websites in order to infer each visitor's interests.
Currently, the standards page includes a pile of 404 errors with -archived-0 in URLs, but the links from the research page still work.