Last week, Google’s Senior VP of Ads & Commerce, Sridhar Ramaswamy, announced it would enforce the Better Ads Standards proposed by the Coalition for Better Ads in Google Chrome. The initiative seeks to create a less intrusive browsing experience and a fair environment for content creators.
The announcement came a little over a week after Google’s Marketing Next conference ended in San Francisco. The event also had Ramaswamy as a headliner, and he revealed the tech giant tracks 70% of all card transactions in the U.S.
Google has made significant efforts to contribute its fair share to make the online experience better. In spite of pushing initiatives like Be Internet Awesome and web-wide campaigns to clean malicious content, it won’t back down when it comes to promoting its core business.
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The internet is an environment where many different agents coexist. If we were to categorize them in marketing terms, one could refer to websites as publishers and web surfers as consumers or users.
Publishers are content creators who, naturally, need to make a living and choose to do so by uploading information to the Internet to lure users into their sites. Views, however, don’t drive revenue, and despite there being other ways to earn money, ads are one of the most effective methods of achieving a stable income.
Google knows this very well. In fact, it knows it so well that AdWords and AdSense, its two main services besides its self-titled search engine, make up more than 90% of its annual earnings every year.
Nevertheless, the tech giant also knows that it needs to foster a peaceful environment to keep consumer engagement. That is why it has decided to take part in the Coalition for Better Ads and help publishers gain user awareness in hopes of keeping businesses afloat and online citizens happy.
Advertisers that don’t respect the standards will have to look for options other than Google Chrome
The Coalition, made up by publishers like Google, Facebook, Unilever, P&G, Reuters, and others, has carried out a comprehensive research on mobile and desktop ad experiences to figure out what works best without being too disruptive.
On mobile, the results of the study showed people hate pop-ups and ads that appear before a site’s content loads, particularly those who come with a countdown that won’t let users close them. Sticky ads at the top and bottom of mobile sites, though, were fine for most consumers.
The story is similar for people who prefer using desktop PCs. They also despise countdown pop-ups, but they have an even stronger dislike for large sticky ads at the bottom of pages. On the other hand, they were ok with no countdown ads showing before loading a site and with non-invasive takeover ads that just fill the background as they browse.
The organization’s findings were not left on paper, as Google proposed they were made into a Better Ads Standards initiative that now it is planning to enforce. As of 2018, Google Chrome won’t show ads that don’t comply with consumer preferences.
Google has highlighted its commitment to the program by saying these measures apply to AdWords products too. It already enforces some of these practices by blocking pop-ups in emerging tabs, for instance, but the ultimate goal is always to achieve a better user experience on the web.
Source: Google