Google Chrome’s built-in ad blocker will now block “annoying” and “intrusive” ads that run before and during videos.
Google blocks ads in Chrome according to what the Coalition for Better Ads considers to be particularly disruptive. Today, the Coalition’s Better Ads Standards have been updated to include a new set of standards for ads shown within videos.
Based on research from 45,000 consumers worldwide, the following three ad experiences were determined to be disruptive on video content that is less than 8 minutes long:
- Pre-roll ads: Long, non-skippable ads or groups of ads longer than 31 seconds that appear before a video.
- Mid-roll ads: Ads of any duration that appear in the middle of a video.
- Image or text ads: Any ads that appear on top of a playing video and are in the middle third of the video player window (or cover more than 20% of the video content).
Again, these new standards only apply to videos less than 8 minutes in length. That means videos longer than 8 minutes can get away with any type of pre-roll or mid-roll ads.
The Coalition for Better Ads is recommending that website owners stop showing the above listed ads to site visitors in the next four months.
Beginning August 5, 2020, the Google Chrome browser will expand its built-in ad blocking to stop showing all ads on sites in any country that repeatedly show these ads.
Google notes that this will also apply to YouTube ads:
“It’s important to note that YouTube.com, like other websites with video content, will be reviewed for compliance with the Standards. Similar to the previous Better Ads Standards, we’ll update our product plans across our ad platforms, including YouTube, as a result of this standard, and leverage the research as a tool to help guide product development in the future.”
