You know that feeling of relief and serenity that comes with a web-browsing experience free of annoying popups, auto-play video ads, and screen-dominating interstitials? As predicted, Google is planning to launch a new ad blocker on Chrome next year in an effort to clean up the internet.
The company is giving web publishers a heads up six months before it unleashes the new tool, which it’s positioning as more of an ad filter than a blocker, reports The Wall Street Journal, citing sources in the know.
The new setting is expected to be turned on by default on both the desktop and mobile version of Chrome, and will keep ads from showing up on sites that have been determined to provide a particularly bad advertising experience for users.
For now, that means any ad types included on a list by the Coalition for Better Ads, an industry group: popup ads, auto-playing video ads with sound, and “prestitial” countdown ads that users have to sit through before they get to content.
Google is giving publishers access to a self-service tool that will alert them to offending ads, and offer advice on how to fix the issue.
On the one hand, this sounds great for consumers who get annoyed by the constant barrage of internet ads on many sites (excluding this one, of course), but it’s not so great for web sites that pull in big bucks with ads.
That includes Google, notes the WSJ, whose advertising revenue last year accounted for 88% of parent company Alphabet’s revenue.
But by pushing its own tool in Chrome, Google could tamp down competition from other blocking tools, and have more control over who sees what.
Of course, if you’re reading Consumerist, which doesn’t have any ads as we’re part of Consumer Reports, nothing will change.
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