Obnoxious, click-baity ads are the worst, and Google plans on installing a native ad blocker directly into its Chrome browser.
Cool, already got one.
Hang on there, sassy italics. Even if you’ve had an ad-blocker for years, remember: Chrome is the world’s number one browser with 50% market share, Google is by far the number one search engine, and it’s the top digital advertising company.
Point is, when Google makes a move, the whole internet changes.
What’s it gonna look like?
No more ads automatically playing noise, no more full page ads with countdowns until you can access content, and no ads that scroll to stay at the top of the page.
Bad ads like these have led 25% of US users to install third-party ad blockers, which block all ads — including the non-intrusive “good” ones that media publishers desperately need to keep up with our constant demand for free content.
It’s also a defensive move for Google, which makes the vast majority of its money ($60B last year) off online advertising.
Or, in other words, they get to be the “good guy” to consumers, while controlling which ads are worthy of passing through their Chrome gates.
No one browser should have all that power
While publishers are pumped about the potential for less third-party ad blockers, they’re also worried about how much power Google wields as both an ad publisher and curator.
Google says its guidelines comes from research done by the Coalition for Better Ads, but many believe the group is a front its most important member, Google, to dictate terms.
