Google to begin removing disruptive ads from Chrome starting February 15

Starting on February 15th, Google’s Chrome web browser will stop showing specific ads.

According to the company’s Keyword blog, Google will prevent disruptive ads from showing after they have been flagged. These ‘bad’ ads include ones that automatically play video with sound, those that expand to the whole page and anything that leads a user to visit a site under false or unclear pretenses.

Google is relying on the Better Ads Standards from the Coalition for Better Ads to determine which ads not to show. The Coalition for Better Ads is an industry group that looks to improve the experience of ads online.

As part of the decision, some sites that contain Google ads will be affected.

“To us, your experience on the web is a higher priority than the money that these annoying ads may generate—even for us,” writes the company’s Rahul Roy-Chowdhury.

Google says its doing this due to the high amount of discontent with annoying ads. The company doesn’t want to block all of the ads as it can hurt sites or advertisers who aren’t being disruptive. Instead, Google will focus on filtering disruptive ad experiences in order to keep the ecosystem of the web healthy and maintain a balance.

In addition, Google says it’ll remove all ads from sites that have a “failing” status in the Ad Experience Report for over 30 days, starting on the 15th.

In other news, Chrome will start marking HTTP websites as not secure later this year.

Source: Google Blog