In the June of 2017, Google confirmed that it was working on a built-in Ad Blocker for Chrome. An implementation of the tool was later released in the Chrome Canary. Finally, the much-awaited ad filtering tool is going live on 15th of February 2018.
This step of Google could be an attempt to make its dominance over the well-known AdBlock Plus (ABP) which was somewhat responsible for making the advertiser’s life miserable. The thing we should keep in mind is that this is not an alternative to AdBlock Plus. The AdBlock Plus eliminates the ads through browser extensions while Google works in a different way.
Google strives to ban the ads from your browser that are most annoying. Which means Google will be automatically blocking intrusive ads in Chrome instead of completely blocking all ads. Google will block only those ads which won’t follow the Coalition for Better Ads guidelines. When Google finds out that a website hosts ads that are against these guidelines, it will block all the ads on that website. Additionally, it will also block prestitial ads with a countdown or auto-playing video ads with sound.
Scroll-overs, large banners, auto-playing or animated ads and Pop-ups will trigger the new AdBlocker in Chrome. The websites must play by the Coalition’s rules else they would risk losing ad revenue from the Chrome users. Google Ad Blocker will be evaluating sample pages from the website based on how many violations are found and the site will be awarded one of the three ratings – “Passing”, “Warning”, or “Failing” status. If any websites have a “Failing” status for more than 30 days, then the tool removes all the advertisements on the website.
The site owners will be notified their status through the Google Search Console. They will have an option to request the site to be re-reviewed after their addressed complaints. Chrome will keep blocking the ads as long as the status of the website is “Failing”, showing an “Ads Blocked” message to the users. This blocker is based on the EasyList Filter which doesn’t exempt Google’s own ad networks – Google’s AdSense and DoubleClick. Reportedly, Google is working on paywalls to help the publishers who don’t wish to rely on advertisements.
As of 12th February, around 42% of the websites that were violating Better Ads Standard have fixed their issues. This seems that Google doesn’t want to eliminate ads totally, instead make them less annoying.
