Google Chrome has just announced that they, as of February 15 this year, will implement their plan to block “unacceptable ads”. This is to ensure that audiences have the best viewing and most non-intrusive experience possible. The decision came from the Coalition for Better Ads, whose members include Google Chrome, Facebook, and IAB. The Coalition for better ads decided the following are the least preferred ads:
Google will penalise non-compliant ads that are deemed unacceptable by the aforementioned Coalition for Better Ads – a group Google itself is a member of.
This will further allow one player to monopolize the digital advertising industry, of which Google Chrome currently has a 50.25% market share.[1]
The rule will also be enforced by Facebook and other major publishing and advertising companies who are members themselves. This leaves the SMEs (advertising agencies) and technology companies, such as Parsec [2], struggling to adapt to sudden change. It all seems to be in favour of the very giant who is imposing the change, who already has its own intrusive ad solutions.
As a digital advertising agency, we were pretty shocked by the decision. Many standard formats offered by all agencies are affected. This is a big change that will have lasting effects on both advertisers and publishers, who will suffer a loss of revenue from advertisements. It seems unreasonable that a big player can manipulate the market for their own pockets, surely the decision should be left to the publishers to decide what they wish to run on their own sites.
Standardisation of rules such as sound-off and non-autoplay makes sense and certainly protects everyone, but the ads themselves and the sizes seem to be unfairly controlled. The removal of certain formats will only benefit those controlling the initiative. It seems Google will be able to dictate how audiences want their screens to appear.
The situation now, for many advertising companies, is to adapt to change or cease to exist. Adapt meaning to eliminate existing ad formats that are deemed unacceptable and retain only a few formats approved by the Coalition. For advertisers, creating a new format is time-consuming and requires extensive research and development. As many formats will now be banned, companies will be forced to compensate losses using their existing and “acceptable” formats, thus, prices will increase.
As for Appetite Creative, we still have a varied menu of other non-intrusive formats to offer, which happen to be some of our best-performing products; including our very own and unique – Liquid Skins. We will continue to innovate.
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What do you think?