Ad Blocking Tool Coming To Chrome In Early 2018 With Sympathy For Publishers

Google Chrome will be getting an ad blocking tool soon. The internet giant confirmed this in a blog post yesterday that it soon offer users a preinstalled tool that will help them block annoying ads in order to make the web experience better. There have been rumours of such a tool in the past weeks but it looks like what Google announced yesterday isn’t what some expect because while it gives users the power to block ads, it also gives publishers an opportunity to correct the mistake and get back into advertising.

Google has joined the Coalition for Better Ads (members include Facebook, Procter & Gamble, Thomson Reuters, The Washington Post and the Interactive Advertising Bureau and the Association of National Advertisers among others) which is a group dedicated to improving ad experiences on the web. So they make sure “annoying” ads don’t just pop up and an example would be sites that just start playing sound unexpectedly or flashing ads. By joining the group, it means sites that open on Google’s Chrome browser will now be required to adhere to strict adverting rules by early 2018. They are giving this time so publishers can start looking at ways to improve ads on their sites.

By not adhering to the new standards, sites will likely be cut off from ad revenues until changes are made.

But it seems Google is at least sympathetic to the plight of publishers like TechBooky who offer content for free on the web which is why they also announced Ad Experience Report which is a tool that provides screenshots and video of “annoying” ads in order for site admins to fix the problems and you can resubmit your site for review once you have addressed the problems. This unlike permanent ad blocking tools is what Google is announcing.

This reduces the number of extensions you have to install to do this and will generally be available from next year.