Back in June, Google announced that Chrome will get a built-in ad blocker to keep invasive and annoying advertisements out of the browser "in early 2018."
Now the Mountain View company has a rollout date for the upcoming feature: Feb. 15.
Chrome To Say Goodbye To Ads
Chrome won't be blocking out every ad out there. It's targeting only those that the Coalition for Better Ads consider as bad, including but not limited to pop-up ads and auto-playing video ads with sound.
For the record, the association consists of Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and Thomson Reuters, to name four members.
Websites will know if their ads fail to live up to the Better Ads Standards via the Ad Experience Report, and if they retain the "failing" status for over 30 days, Google will block all of their ads, even the ones it owns.
After they fix the violations, owners of such websites can resubmit their sites for review, and if they manage to meet the standard, their ads will be restored.
This is all part of the Better Ads Experience Program, which is designed to improve the overall experience of users online when it comes to ads.
On an interesting note, Chrome's native ad blocker won't keep advertisements from tracking users, and incidentally, the feature isn't exactly a part of an update — Chrome 64 is slated for release on Jan. 23, while Chrome 65 on March 6, which means Google will probably remotely flip the switch and gradually roll it out.
It's also worth mentioning that auto-play videos can be muted on the Chrome beta already.
Bad Ads: Desktop vs. Mobile
Just to be clear, bad ads on the desktop are pop-up ads, auto-playing video ads with sound — two of which have been mentioned earlier — prestitial ads with a countdown timer, and large sticky ads.
Meanwhile, bad ads on the mobile include pop-up ads, prestitial ads, ads with a density higher than 30 percent, flashing animated ads, auto-playing ads with sound, postitial ads with a countdown timer, full-screen scrollover ads, and large sticky ads.
In other words, those who want to stay on Google's good side will have to take note of these.
The Bottom Line
Almost everyone doesn't like ads at all, but that's arguably because they're typically pesky and intrusive. That should all change when everyone follows the guidelines of the Coalition for Better Ads, though.
