Advertising
1 min read

How publishers are preparing for Google’s ad-blocking version of Chrome

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As Google prepares to roll out an ad-blocking version of Chrome, it’s been scoring websites using its Ad Experience Report. The tool provides screenshots and videos of ads that have been identified by the Coalition for Better Ads as most annoying to users, such as pop-ups and autoplaying video ads with sound and “prestitial” ads with countdown timers.

While there are little to no worries for publishers that already avoid such ads (it’s hard to disagree with Google’s stance that people shouldn’t have to put up with video ads that play automatically with the sound on), others that struggle to monetize or have less resources to fix their sites have some concerns. Here are a few of them:

Some publishers have the impression that newsletter sign-up pop-ups will also be blocked forcing them to decide between removing those, which could mean sacrificing some newsletter sign-ups, or risk Google blocking all their site’s ads. That’s a trade-off no publisher wants to have to make when trying to make direct connections with readers.

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