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I’ve spent the last two years fighting in the ad-block trenches, so I’ve gotten lots of questions about Google’s recent announcement that new Chrome ad blocking options are on the way and what that means for publishers, ad blocking, and the industry as a whole.
Before we get into that, though, let’s go over the key points of Google’s announcement:
1. Ad blocking/ad filtering feature built into Chrome. This is getting a lot of coverage because it sounds controversial to say Google is building an ad blocker, but the concern is largely overblown.
By default, Chrome will prevent all ads from loading on any website that doesn’t conform to the Initial Better Ads Standards published by the Coalition for Better Ads. These standards aim to eliminate ad formats that block content, disrupt the user’s experience, or generally annoy users. Most publishers will not be impacted by the move, but it will force those with bad ad experiences to clean up their act.
It’s a smart move by Google, but it’s about five years too late. It’s likely to slow (or maybe even stop) the growth of ad blocking, but it’s difficult to imagine that existing ad block users will spontaneously uninstall their ad blockers because of it.
Some have speculated that there are anti-trust concerns if Google is playing the role of arbiter. However, I’m not in that camp. Google’s dominance in the market is already established, and it stands to lose far more if it abuses its new power than it could possibly gain.
2. Funding Choices. Google will launch a Chrome feature next year that allows a publisher to wall off content from ad block users unless they disable their ad blocker or pay up via Google Contributor (in which case, Google gets a cut).
More than likely, the reason for baking the feature into the browser is to make it impossible for ad blockers to circumvent.
Google will make this available to publishers in the form of a product called Funding Choices. Publishers who sign up will be able to stop any Chrome user with an ad blocker from accessing their content unless the user turns off their ad blocker or pays.
What this means for publishers
If Funding Choices is wildly successful, it could take a significant bite out of global ad-block rates, and publishers around the world will rejoice.
Unfortunately, there’s a lot of evidence to suggest Funding Choices is unlikely to succeed because:
a) Many have tried and failed
Google is not the first to try this approach. There’s a graveyard full of anti-ad block vendors who banked on the strategy. Of those who remain, few still offer this product.
One such company experimented with the strategy for years. Today, they claim it results in bounce rates as high as 74 percent and recommend ad recovery (AKA ad reinsertion) as the only viable solution for publishers.
Anecdotally, I’ve discussed the topic with a couple hundred…
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