Advertising is a critical component of the web, keeping content open and free for everyone. However, over the years we've increasingly heard from users that while some types of advertising are fine, others can seem overwhelmingly frustrating or intrusive. Due to these poor ad experiences, the usage of extensions that block ads across the web continues to rise, up about 30% from just last year. This reduces the ability for publishers to continue creating free content and threatens the sustainability of the web ecosystem.

Chrome has always focused on giving users the best possible experience browsing the web. For example, Chrome, like other browsers, prevents pop-ups in new tabs based on the fact that they are annoying. Today, we have an even better understanding of the types of experiences that bother users when it comes to unwanted advertising. New public, consumer-driven research done by the Coalition for Better Ads in creating the Better Ads Standards outlines a number of these experiences, such as full-page ad interstitials, ads that unexpectedly play sound, and flashing ads. In dialog with the Coalition and other industry groups, we plan to have Chrome stop showing ads (including those owned or served by Google) on websites that are not compliant with the Better Ads Standards starting in early 2018.

We know that many web developers make most or all of their revenue from digital advertising, and we want to make following the guidance of the standard as easy as possible. Starting today we're rolling out the Ad Experience Report, a new tool which provides screenshots and videos of annoying ad experiences we’ve identified to make it easy to find and fix the issues. Developers can also use the report to re-submit their site for review once the problematic ad experiences have been addressed.

This is just one step toward making advertising an excellent experience across the web, and we plan to continue integrating user feedback with developer needs to help balance the web ecosystem for all.

Posted by Rahul Roy-Chowdhury, VP Product Management