"An ad blocker developed by Google" is a bit of an oxymoron in itself. Why would a company that rakes in billions through advertising revenue develop a tool that blocks its source of income? The answer is simple; the internet is a mean and horrible place (don't let anyone tell you otherwise). Advertisements aren't inherently bad, but some practices employed by several advertisers make the experience annoying. Loud ads that play music out of nowhere, full-screen popups with hidden dismiss buttons are a few gripes that users have with advertisements. An integrated ad blocker for Chrome was in the works since last year and we can expect to see it in action soon.
Chrome will automatically block ads on sites that fail the Better Ads Standards. Pop-ups, animated or auto-playing ads, scroll-overs, and large banners are some of the types of ads that are discouraged. When one request has been blocked; Chrome will show the user a message indicating that ad blocking has occurred as well as an option to disable this setting by selecting “allow ads on this site.” For desktop users, the notification in Chrome's address bar will look similar to Chrome's existing pop-up blocker. Android users will see a message in a small infobar at the bottom of their screen and can tap on “details” to see more information and override the default setting.
Sites are evaluated by examining a sample of pages from the site. Depending on how many violations are found, the site will be evaluated as having a status of Passing, Warning, or Failing. Site owners can also see more detailed results, such as the specific violations of the Better Ads Standards that were found, via the Ad Experience Report in Google’s Search Console and evaluation status of sites can be accessed via the Ad Experience Report API. Site owners can also request to have their site reviewed after they have remedied the non-compliant ad experiences.
The blocker is based on the EasyList filter (which is used by every ad blocker), and also affects Google's AdSense and DoubleClick platforms. According to Google, 42% of sites that were previously failing the Coalition's standards have resolved their issues since February 12th, so the ad blocker is already showing results.
News Source: Chromium
