14 DAY TRIAL // Google Chrome will start blocking the intrusive ads that show up while watching videos, including on YouTube, the company announced today.
The decision comes after the Coalition for Better Ads conducted research to determine the disruptive types of ads on video content that is less than 8 minutes long.
The group says that non-skippable pre-roll ads or groups of ads longer than 31 seconds appearing before a video, as well as ads that show up in the middle of the video interrupting the video are two of the versions that people hate the most online.
Blocking annoying ads
Google says that beginning August 5, 2020, these ads will be blocked by default in Google Chrome, and the company will start looking into improving the way ads are pushed to users on YouTube.com in order to address this complaint.
“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,” Google says.
While it’s still possible at this point to block ads on YouTube using third-party Google Chrome extensions, such functionality does not exist for the mobile version of the YouTube app, so it’ll be interesting to see how Google deals with this problem on Android and iOS.
The search company says webmasters and video content publishers should keep an eye on the updated documentation to make sure they aren’t impacted once the new rules come into effect.
“If you operate a website that shows ads, you should consider reviewing your site status in the Ad Experience Report, a tool that helps publishers to understand if Chrome has identified any violating ad experiences on your site. Starting this week, we’ll update the Ad Experience Report with information to help publishers resolve any issues with these new video standards currently on their site,” Google says.