Yes, it's already motivated a few sites to make some changes, and others will likely follow. The big question is how much Google's moves will actually discourage people from using more aggressive ad-blockers.

'As long as you're practicing respect for our audience, you're OK,' he says. But he says companies generally understand that bad advertising practices have a negative impact on their brands.

Michael Priem, CEO of the Minneapolis-based advertising firm Modern Impact that works with companies like Samsung and Best Buy, says his clients worry about the impact these changes will have on their ability to reach consumers. 'Every review is captured in video which is surfaced in the Ad Experience Report.' 'We use a combination of manual and automated methods to review sites,' the Google spokesperson tells WIRED. Google has been reviewing the most popular sites in North America and the EU for violations of those standards. The guidelines identify four specific types of desktop ads and eight types of mobile ads that users find unacceptable, including ads that take up too much screen space, play audio automatically, and obscure the content users are trying to view. The group surveyed 25,000 users in North America and Europe to find out what ads they find most annoying, and used the results to craft a set of guidelines called the Better Ads Standards.

Instead, it focuses only on blocking ads that violate guidelines published by the Coalition for Better Advertising, a group that includes advertising companies, publishers, and tech companies (WIRED's publisher, Condé Nast, belongs to coalition member Digital Content Next). The new Chrome ad-filtering feature doesn't directly address privacy or page speed.

Install google chrome ad blocker