According to the Wall Street Journal tech giant Google is mulling over the idea to add a native ad blocker to the Google Chrome browser. It’s a strange move you might think, considering Google’s primary source of income is advertising, but Google say this is to provide a better “user experience”.
Google is sometimes known for scrapping things at the twelfth hour, but if it goes ahead the new ad-blocking feature will be enabled by default on the desktop and mobile version of the Chrome browser.
Not all ads will be blocked, (our very own site needs revenue from advertising) but ads that have been identified by the Coalition for Better Ads, such as auto-playing video ads with sounds, pop-ups, and “prestitial” ads that first show users a countdown before showing the actual content, will be.
As the type of ads that are served up by Google are not of the types stated above, if this rumoured ad-blocker is included into Chrome it will mainly affect third-party advertisers. The catch that has been identified is that if Google finds an unacceptable ad on a website, it will block all ads from loading on that page. Therefore the site owner will need to ensure that there are no sub-par ads used on their site.
When you think just how popular the Chrome browser is on both desktop and mobile, this inclusion of ad-blocking software could seriously impact both third party advertisers and third-party ad-blocking software suppliers.
What are your thoughts on Google introducing ad-blocking software to their browser? Let us know in the comments below.
Source WSJ