Google has announced that its Chrome web browser will start blocking intrusive ads worldwide beginning July 2019. Ben Galbraith, Chrome Senior Director of Product, said in a blog post that Chrome will be expanding its user protection and will cease showing all the ‘intrusive’ advertisements on websites globally. This feature includes blocking the ones that tend to target users’ online behaviour to repeatedly display disruptive advertisements.
The search engine giant had first launched this feature in February but restricted it to North America and Europe. However, the ad-blocking setting was rolled out to Google Chrome browser globally.
The ad blocker filters only the most ‘intrusive’ type of advertisements that violate the Coalition for Better Ads’ standards. Besides pop-up advertisements, it also blocks full-page advertisements with countdown timers and prevents users from seeing content for a certain amount of time on that page. It also prevents auto-play videos advertisements with sound, as well as large sticky advertisements that peskily stay on the page even when the user scrolls, among many others.
From this week, website owners in regions outside of North America and Europe can make use of Google’s Ad Experience Report tool to check if they happen to have any such ads on their websites.
“Our ultimate goal is not to filter ads, but to build a better web for everyone, everywhere,” Galbraith further said in the post.
Appealing to website owners, he said that fewer than one per cent of the millions of sites on Google have been reviewed till date have had their advertisements removed. As of 2019, about two-thirds of web publishers who previously did not comply with the standards developed by the industry now do so.
Galbraith wrote that the enforcement by Chrome has inspired many website owners to improve upon their advertising experience in a way ‘benefits’ users.
