Google Chrome launches default ad-blocker

Online advertising is broken. Pop-ups cover half your screen and won't go away and auto play videos blare marketing jingles, driving us to install ad blockers, cutting into publishers' revenue. With no solution in sight, Google is taking matters into its own hands, launching a filter in the Chrome browser to punish sites for excessive use of the most irritating ads.

The filter — which lands in Chrome today — isn't an ad blocker. You'll still see ads and be tracked via cookies, unlike if you install more robust third-party add-ons such as Ad block Plus or uBlock. 

Instead, Chrome is only removing ads from websites that don't meet standards laid out by the Coalition for Better Ads, of which Google is a founding member and has a seat on the board. The setting is on by default but it is possible to opt-out.

"98.5 per cent of the web is fine," Scott Spencer, director of product management for sustainable ads at Google, says. "It turns out it's a case where it's a very small number of websites that are driving consumer frustration with ad experience... a few bad actors are causing a problem for everybody." It's #NotAllAds, then.

According to figures shared by Google, only 1.5 per cent of 100,000 websites it has audited failed to meet Coalition standards, and of those just 0.9 per cent are excessive in their use of irritating formats. 

When a Chrome user visits those sites, the filter won't simply strip out offending ad formats. Instead, publishers spotted with "numerous" problematic ad formats (not just a single bad ad) will be sent a warning and given 30 days to improve before Chrome strips all ads — good and bad — from its pages. 

It's effectively a punishment for websites and publishers who refuse to play along, with Google acting as the enforcer using Chrome's market dominance as its stick.

Via this ad filter, Google is hoping to improve the user experience in the Chrome browser, but also kill off the worst ads to try to save the advertising market and its own business model — and no wonder, when $27bn (£19bn) of its revenue in its last quarterly results came from online ad sales, and 22 per cent of Brits are already using ad blockers, according to the Internet Advertising Bureau UK.

“The move could be seen as Google simply protecting its own financial interests, considering it gets most of its income from ads," says David Tuffley, a senior lecturer in Applied Ethics and SocioTechnical Studies at Griffith University’s School of ICT. 

"You might also see it as part of a larger strategic move to help the larger online publishing world that relies on ad revenue for survival. These have been hard hit by third-party ad blockers. By removing ads that have annoying content (auto-play sounds, screen pop-ups, large overlaid images, 

Flash or Shockwave effects to name a few), advertisers might be persuaded to make ads that people actually like, or at least not mind too much."​ And then, perhaps, we'll stop using ad blockers.

Not the end of ad blocking

Whether the Chrome filter reduces the use of ad blockers depends on why people install them in the first place. According to figures from adtech startup Page Fair, 30 per cent of people surveyed install an ad blocker for security reasons, and 6 per cent for privacy reasons; 59 percent of people install a blocker for a combination of interruptions, slow loading times, and too many ads on a page. 

Google's Chrome filter will help clean up a small slice of digital advertising, but does nothing to protect against malicious ads — and with crypto jacking, that's an increasing concern — or help avoid privacy-invasive tracking.

Ad Block Plus operations manager Ben Williams says the Chrome change was "incremental", and didn't expect it to impact downloads of his firm's blocker. "What they're doing is akin to what all browsers did years ago by introducing standard pop-up blocking — maybe like a move from a supermax prison to merely a maximum security one. There's still only one way out of jail, though, and it's an ad blocker."

Indeed, getting rid of bad ads improves the user experience, but it also helps maintain the status quo that leaves Google dominating the online ad market with its privacy-invading tracking tactics, argues Aral Balkan, developer of the Better tracker blocker for Safari.

"Google is an adtech company," he says. "An adtech company creating an advertising filter is like a cigarette company creating a cigarette filter. It gives the illusion that somehow things are better for you when they’re really not; the product is as harmful as ever. 

When the largest ad tech company in the world creates an advertising filter, only the woefully gullible will see that as anything but public relations and misdirection."

He adds: "The aim of Google releasing its own ad filter is to give people a false sense of security and, hopefully, to keep them from installing tracker blockers like uBlock Origin that actually protect people from surveillance by the likes of Google and Facebook on the web.

Google's Spencer says there was "no assumption" at the Coalition that irritating ads were the reason people hate ads as opposed to privacy or security, but its research showed user experience was the main reason people installed a blocker.

And plenty of those not using ad blockers are also annoyed at online ads. Figures supplied by Google show that one in five Chrome feedback reports mention annoying ads, and there's been five billion clicks to "Mute this Ad", a feature Google launched last year.

"This is indicating to us that consumers are having a challenge with the ads they're seeing on the web," says Spencer. He added: "No one knew what the true threshold of annoyance was foc consumers." To answer that question, the Coalition undertook extensive research, he says, surveying tens of thousands of people.

Here's what we hate, according to Coalition research. On desktop, we're done with popup ads, auto playing sound, prestitial ads with a countdown, and large sticky ads. On mobile, we're annoyed with those as well as prestitial ads (which cover the content), flashing animations, full-screen scroll-over ads, ads with a countdown timer, and pages with more than 30 per cent ad density. Those are the ads that Google's Chrome filter will target, in the hopes we'll happily tolerate the remaining ads.

The battle against blockers

The Chrome filter is Google's way of enforcing the standards developed by the aforementioned Coalition for Better Ads, based on its own research. Google is a founding member of that organization and has a seat on the board, alongside Microsoft, News Corp, Facebook, Thomson Reuters and others. In other words, Google helps set the rules, and then enforces them.

Another member of the Coalition may come as a surprise. Axel Springer was one of a host of German publishers that have taken legal action against Eye, the developers of Ad block plus — though so far the courts have favored the ad blocking add-on.

 Yet Axel Springer is a member of the Coalition for Better Ads. Why would it join a group that's promoting ad filtering? Chief digital officer for media impact, Carsten Schwecke, says the aim was to "add a European perspective to a so far very much US-focused view" — the company has previously said it was "afraid of Google" and its dominance.

That concern about US domination of online advertising standards was echoed by Die Zeit, another German publisher that has challenged Eye. While Die Zeit isn't a member of the Coalition, Christian Röpke, CEO fo Zeit Online, says it has close ties to the group via its ad sales house and the local advertising board, BDVW.

While Röpke says it's necessary that the advertising ecosystem improve, and that Google's efforts "could be helpful," he also has concerns about the US focus.

 "However, we need more acceptance by Google and the Coalition for Better Ads for the differences of the advertising market in Europe and the US. Both have a very US-centric approach as to advertising formats."

Google's Spencer says the Chrome filter won't be localized; it will ban the same sorts of ads globally, as Coalition research suggests annoyances are "fairly universal". So far, its research has been limited to North America and Europe.

While Google clearly has plenty of power in the online advertising world — and may now have
even more thanks to the Chrome filter — that doesn't mean publishers will simply meet its demands. "Google’s position with Chrome and its ad blocker is definitely special and we watch it very carefully," Axel Springer's Schwecke said via email. 

"Ad blocking is principally not acceptable for Axel Springer, since it always is and has to be our decision what content we are publishing – this decision cannot be made a third party. We joined the Coalition for Better Ads only as part of a voluntary self-commitment and we reject any measures from outside that interfere in publisher’s websites.”

Indeed, not all "bad ad" sites are willing to bend to Google's demands. In the past six months that Google has audited websites via its Ad Experience Report, just 37 per cent of those with problematic ads went on to fix them.

 Why would they risk Google's wrath? "As much as irritate people, annoying ads do work, so there's positive reinforcement for the advertiser," notes Tuffley.

And that's perhaps why publishers and the rest of the web have been too slow to improve ads, leaving it in Google's hands. 

"I think it is a pity that Google needs to push the industry towards cleaning up our act in regard to online advertising and that we as an industry did not agree earlier on new standards and better digital advertising," Die Zeit Röpke says. But it's not only Google pushing for better ads — it's everyone who uses the web.