WHAT!?! Google is Blocking Ads?!
In the last few weeks you have undoubtedly heard about the Google Ad Blocker, the latest plans for Chrome, which involves a built in ad blocking tool. As a digital marketer this may sound alarming, but not to worry. Google isn’t trying to block all of our ads, just the more intrusive varieties that I will go over below.
Say goodbye to Pop-up ads! These are among the most annoying ads to encounter on a website. As soon as you hit the landing page, BOOM!, in your face ads that must be closed to browse the site. They can be in various sizes and usually take up most of the page.
Similar to pop-up ads are prestitial ads with countdown. They usually appear before the page fully loads and have a timer on them which forces the user to wait a certain amount of time before being able to close the ad. These ads interfere with the user experience and can cause some users to leave the page.
Also on the chopping block are Large Sticky ads. These ads, as their name suggests, are usually stuck to the bottom or side of a web page and move with the page as a user scrolls. They can take up to 30% of the screen and can’t be closed.
Auto-playing video ads with sounds are also going to get blocked. These usually begin playing sound as soon as the page has finished loading and can cause users to abandon the page and close the window to stop the unexpected and unwanted sound.
There are a few additional ad types being blocked on mobile as well. Ads on mobile pages that take up more than 30% of the screen will be getting the ax when the update goes live. These can make the users frustrated and the browsing experience on mobile quite bothersome.
Another type of mobile ad being removed is the Full-screen scroll over ad. This ad type appears on top of the main page content and block it from view until a user scrolls past the ad. This causes frustration and a disrupted browsing experience.
The final ad type to wave goodbye is flashing animated ads. This ad type is highly distracting to users and involves rapidly changing backgrounds and colors. Animated ads that do not flash will not be blocked however.
With the roll out of its ad blocker Google is hoping to improve the user experience across all websites that are visited using Chrome. There has not been a confirmed date on when the ad blocker will go live, but Google has stated that they expect it to be sometime in early 2018.