Chrome will start auto-blocking the web’s most annoying ads in February

Google is going to make your web browsing experience a lot less annoying soon. The company today revealed it will stop showing ads in Chrome that don’t meet certain standards for quality starting February 15. Google  had announced its intention to do so back June, but this is the first time it’s provided a concrete date.

Those quality standards are set by the Coalition for Better Ads – which Google is a part of – and they prohibit all sort of annoying ads. On desktop, those include pop-up ads, auto-playing videos with sounds, prestitials with countdowns, large sticky ads, and more. On mobile, these also include infuriating scrollover ads, flashing ads, etc. You can read more about best ad practices here and here.

Basically, the point is to prevents ads that you can’t choose to ignore, and I’m all for it. The company is taking a fairly strong-arm approach to it too. If just one ad causes the site to receive a ‘failing’ status for more than 30 days, Google will remove all ads from that site.

Of course, the worst offenders will always try to find ways to circumvent these regulations or create even more annoying ads, but hopefully the overall trend continues towards a less annoying internet.

Via VentureBeat