This July, Google will weep for there are no more worlds to banhammer: 'Bad ads' to be blocked globally

Come July 9, Google Chrome will take its online advertising controls global as it begins worldwide enforcement of the Better Ads Standards, guidelines developed to discourage truly disruptive online ads. The Coalition for Better Ads, an industry group that devised the standards and which counts Google as a member, on Wednesday …

[JohnFen]

The problem is...

The problem is that the CBA doesn't even consider the most poisonous aspect of ads as a bad thing, and so the "better ads" standard doesn't prohibit it: tracking people without their consent. So the entire effort is, in my opinion, worthless.

[ma1010]

Re: The problem is...

@JohnFen

Exactly! Flashing, sticky, or other such annoying ads are annoying and something that would make me just close a web page immediately. But it's the CREEPY TRACKING that really got to me. I am a ham radio guy and started blocking ads years ago after I started seeing ads for ham radio gear. I know that hams are a very small portion of the population at large, so the likelihood that those ads just happened to be in my browser = 0. That brought home to me what people were getting at when they talked about tracking. I did a bit of research and installed Ghostery, which has done a good job for me for years.

[Mark 85]

Re: The problem is...

The concept of "better ads" escapes me unless it's Googlespeak for "our ads". Seems like lately they've finding ways around my blockers. Ads are still an intrusion, IMO. I gave up watching TV including cable as ads started taking up more and more time from anything that was playing.

Since Google is everywhere and very user targeted, I'm waiting for the eventual revelation that all our data they hold has been shared with the TLA's and FLA's.

[Neil Barnes]

Re: The problem is...

There's the problem.

With *very* few exceptions, the purpose of TV is to persuade you to keep watching long enough to see the adverts. The purpose of most sites on the internet is to do the same.

Nobody seems to know whether the adverts actually do anything other than to trigger make a cup of tea/press the fast forward button/kill the page but there's a mindset that doesn't even explore options other than adverts.

(which is why, incidentally, I'm about to move from WhatsApp to Signal. The threat of inline adverts alone...)

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: The problem is...

Upvoted for the final line in the comment. I moved as soon as the announcement was made - others have followed.

[Number6]

I would add "any sort of ad that requires a script to run on my machine" as bad because it's a security hazard. On the other hand, it does make it easy to clobber ads by blocking scripts from known ad sites.

If they want to run a script-based system then they can do it server-side. There's also the point that such ads would be way harder to block if done carefully.

[Steve Knox]

So Google considers the following to be perfectly fine on desktops:

Prestitial ads (without a countdown)

Pages with more than 30% ad density

Flashing animations

Poststitial ads that require a countdown to dismiss

Fullscreen scrollover ads

Fuck you, Google.

[Aedazan]

The great war of our time.

We thought world war three would take place on the battlefield, instead it took place in our browsers.

Jokes aside won't this just start another arms race between the advertisers and the browser manufacturers?

I suspect the 'Other uses' section of the 'Arms race' wikipedia page will need to be updated shortly.

[Mark 85]

Re: The great war of our time.

Jokes aside won't this just start another arms race between the advertisers and the browser manufacturers?

As long as Google has Chrome and nice fat market share and growing as far as browsers go, they won't change their ways.

[Anonymous Coward]

Also missing from Google's naughty ad list

Fake virus warnings that trick users into downloading dodgy apps from the Play Store.

Here is a comment from a user on the Play Store:

"Predatory advertising, their ads alert you that your phone has been infected when that is not the case, they redirect you to download this app so they can make revenue and I've heard the app itself is also adware. I highly recommend not to download this app, this company could be facing a very serious lawsuit for its deceptive advertising of trying to pray on the elderly and technology uninformed."

What say you Google?

[Mark 85]

Re: Also missing from Google's naughty ad list

What say you Google?

Chortles and counts the money is probably their response.

[bombastic bob]

Re: Also missing from Google's naughty ad list

also missing: ANY ad with SCRIPT in it (or that is used to track you without permission)

yeah that'd pretty much be ALL of them, wouldn't it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Prestitial and autoplay video dross?

What, like the ads on YouTube?

[Anonymous Coward]

What about ads using Flash? Shouldn't they be banned from all platforms?

[the Jim bloke]

Encourage ads using Flash.

Make it compulsory for ALL ads to use Flash.

Then disable Flash...

(actually, disable Flash first....)

[phuzz]

Trust

Oh, Google are saying it's now safe to turn off my ad blocker? What could possibly go wrong?

[stiine]

Re: Trust

What would you like to go wrong? Anything is possible.

[mark l 2]

"Brave just reported 5.5 million monthly active users and 28,000 publishers participating in its attention token system, which strips websites of their ads and trackers, and runs non-intrusive, non-tracking adverts from Brave's own network in their place "

I haven't used Brave but surely there is quite a difference between having an ad blocker in the browser and replacing ads on a website with your own ads that you profit from? Even if Brave claim that the publisher can get up to 55% revenue from those swapped out ads, it still means that 45% is going to line the pockets of the Brave browser creators.

The deal gets worse as well if you read the T&C for the ad swap program they advise you only get paid out once the funds reach $100, which could take years to achieve since only Brave Browsers can participate in this and they have a very small user share. They also pay out in cryptocoins so what might be worth $100 in Etherium now might be worth $5 by the time you get your payout with the exchange rate on these crypto currencies.

It is like Samsung or Sony bring out a new TV that replaces the ads shown in the commercial breaks with their own ads and offer the TV stations 55% revenue in exchange.

[Spazturtle]

That is not the end users problem though, that is the sites problem.

Say an ISP wants to offer a service where all ads are replaced by their own ads and the user gets money off their bill, then I see no problem with that, to the user there is no difference other then with ad replacement they pay less ad get less tracking.

"It is like Samsung or Sony bring out a new TV that replaces the ads shown in the commercial breaks with their own ads and offer the TV stations 55% revenue in exchange."

As long as they are only replacing ads and not adding more then that would be fine with me, hell if the replacement ads were silent then it would be a positive feature.

[JohnFen]

I have no pity or sympathy for impact to the business model of sites that insist on throwing me under the bus that is the internet ad industry.

[sabroni]

Fox. Hen house.

I love debugging in Chrome but no way I'd ever use it as my regular browser. Thank fuck we've got NoScript on Firefox Android now!

[avensis]

What about YouTube ads ?