From today, Chrome strips every ad from sites in North America and Europe that repeatedly fail the Better Ads Standards. Modest, ordinary ads usually pass, and the Ad Experience Report in Search Console shows where yours stand.

What starts today

From today, Chrome filters ads on websites that repeatedly show the kinds of ads people find most intrusive. It applies to sites in North America and Europe.

Filtering is all or nothing. Chrome drops every ad on the site, whoever served it, Google's own included.

Chrome tells the visitor, in a small message, that it has blocked intrusive ads, and offers a way to let them through.

Google has been reviewing sites and telling their owners about problems since last summer. Today those warnings start to have consequences.

Where the standards come from

The rules come from the Coalition for Better Ads, which brings together trade associations, advertisers, publishers and technology firms. Google is a member.

Its research put real readers in front of a long list of ad experiences and recorded which ones they disliked most. Those at the bottom became the standards.

There are separate lists for desktop and mobile. The mobile list is longer, because a format that is merely irritating on a large screen can take over a small one.

Until now the standards were advice. Chrome's filter turns them into something with a price attached.

The formats that fail

The standards name particular formats, not advertising in general.

The last is the one that creeps up on a site. No single ad breaks a rule; the page simply gathers units over the years until, on a phone, the advertising starts to crowd out the article.

How a site ends up filtered

Reviewers look at a selection of a site's pages, once as a desktop visitor and once as a phone visitor, and give each version its own status.

When a site fails, its verified owners in Search Console are told, and it has thirty days to put things right before filtering begins.

Once the problems are fixed, the owner asks for a new review from the report. Filtering ends when the site passes again.

Reading the Ad Experience Report

The Ad Experience Report is one of the tools in Search Console. It only helps if someone at the business has verified the site there and actually opens it.

Desktop and mobile are reported separately. Where a page failed, the report names the experience the reviewers saw, often with a screenshot or a short video.

Many smaller sites show not reviewed, which only means nobody at Google has assessed them. It is not a clean bill of health.

Read both. A site can pass on desktop and fail on mobile, where the rules are stricter.

A worked example

A site covering junior and minor hockey across the region paid its way with display ads from one network and banners sold directly to local businesses.

One advertiser, a car dealership, paid extra for a banner fixed to the bottom of the screen, coded into the site by hand. On a laptop it was a slim strip.

On phones, the banner scaled with the width of the screen, and the dealership's tall artwork turned it into a block that covered a large part of every page for the whole visit.

Late last year the report showed the mobile site failing, with a large sticky ad as the reason. The publisher had assumed the standards applied only to the network's ads.

On phones, the dealership's banner was moved into the page between game reports, scrolling away like everything else. A review was requested, and the mobile status returned to passing.

The advertiser kept its placement. It simply stopped following readers down the page.

Why most small sites are fine

A handful of standard banners beside or between the content is not what the standards were written for.

Failures tend to come from formats chosen to squeeze more from each visit: the pop-up, the video that talks, the unit that never leaves the screen.

If your site shows only standard banners, and nothing new has been added lately, the report will probably confirm what you expect. It is still worth five minutes to look.

Ads you did not place yourself

Not every format on a site was chosen by its owner.

Networks and partners can switch on new formats from their own dashboards, and some video players start with sound unless told otherwise.

Keep a written record of every partner on the site and the formats each is allowed to serve, and ask partners in writing to keep failing formats off it.

Look at your own pages the way readers do: on a phone, signed out, with no ad blocker. Ads differ from one visit to the next, so check more than once.

Readers notice before Chrome does

The filter is the visible consequence, but intrusive ads cost a site readers long before any filter applies.

A box leaping over the first paragraph, or a voice suddenly speaking from a corner, is what drives readers to install ad blockers, which then remove every ad on every site.

Separately, Google's mobile search has for just over a year counted pop-ups that cover the content of pages people arrive at from search against those pages.

Passing the standards is the minimum. Ads readers can tolerate are what keep them coming back.

The counter-case

Most business websites carry no advertising, so today does not touch them.

A publisher with ordinary display units in sensible places will almost certainly pass and has no reason to redesign anything.

The filter also applies only in Chrome, so a failing site still shows ads in other browsers. That is no reason to wait, since Chrome is where a large share of readers are.

But any site that earns from ads should open the report today, and again after every change to its formats or partners.

Today

  1. Confirm who can sign in to Search Console.
  2. Open the Ad Experience Report and read both statuses.
  3. Look at your pages on a phone, signed out.
  4. Include ads you sold directly in the check.
  5. Make sticky units small or scroll with the page.
  6. Turn off sound on any autoplaying video.
  7. Request a review once everything is fixed.

Step four is the one owners forget. The standards cover every ad on the page, including a sponsor banner coded by hand, not only what a network serves.

Chrome's other change for site owners this year is covered in Chrome will mark every HTTP page not secure in July.

Frequently asked questions

What does Chrome start doing today?

It removes every ad from sites in North America and Europe that repeatedly fail the Better Ads Standards, including ads served by Google, and tells visitors ads were blocked.

Which kinds of ads break the standards?

Ads that pop up over content, start video with sound, make readers wait through a countdown or stay pinned in a large block, plus several phone-only formats such as flashing animation.

How do I find out if my site fails?

Verify the site in Search Console and open the Ad Experience Report. It reports on desktop and mobile separately and describes anything the reviewers flagged.

Does not reviewed mean my site passed?

No. It means Google has not looked at the site yet. Check your formats against the standards anyway, especially on phones, where the rules are stricter.

Do the standards cover ads I sell directly?

Yes. They apply to every ad on the page, including a sponsor banner coded into the site by hand, not only ads served by a network.

Will a site with a few ordinary banners fail?

Very unlikely. The standards target specific formats such as pop-ups, sound and large sticky units, not advertising in general.

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.

Sticky ads on your phone pages?

Open the Ad Experience Report today. We can check every format your pages show and change any that fail.

Start a Conversation