Google is trying to make ads less annoying for you – i.e. no more annoying, intrusive ads that decide to randomly blare music, or has a time stamp on it before you can read what you actually clicked to read.
While it might seem counter intuitive – considering a major part of Google’s revenue comes from Google ads – the tech giant noted that “these frustrating experiences can lead some people to block all ads–taking a big toll on the content creators, journalists, web developers and videographers who depend on ads to fund their content creation.”
Google’s Ad Experience Report aims to helps publishers understand how the Better Ads Standards apply to their own websites. It provides screenshots and videos of annoying ad experiences we’ve identified to make it easy to find and fix the issues.
Google joined the Coalition for Better Ads, an industry group dedicated to improving online ads, since it’s launch in 2016. Google’s efforts is in-line with the recently announced Better Ads Standards that gives a clear, public, data-driven guidance for how the industry can improve ads for consumers.
Apart from the report, Google will be rolling out another beta program called Funding Choices, where publishers can show a customised message to visitors using an ad blocker, inviting them to either enable ads on their site, or pay for a pass that removes all ads on that site through the new Google Contributor.
Don’t hold out hope that this standard will roll out anytime soon though. Google plan to have Chrome stop showing ads (including those owned or served by Google) on websites that are not compliant with the Better Ads Standards starting in early 2018.
Funding Choices is available now to publishers in North America, U.K., Germany, Australia and New Zealand and will be rolling out in other countries later this year.