Over the last few years, there has been a massive rise in the use of Ad Blockers on the web, which per year is believed to be costing the advertising industry over $22 Billion. In fact, Ad Block Plus, which is one of the world’s most popular ad block extensions has now been downloaded over 500 million times, with usage growing by over 40% in the last year.

According to research by HubSpot, the 2 main reasons users download ad blockers is due to finding ads intrusive and disruptive to what they are doing on the web. Therefore, to try and help create a more harmonious and user friendly environment for users and ads, Google have joined forces with the Coalition for Better Ads.

In their latest post on the topic, which you can read here, Google discuss how they are working with the Coalition for Better Ads and have even created a new Ad Experience Report to help publishers understand how the Better Ads Standards apply to their own sites.

One of our clients, Hearst Digital Media, have been involved with this new initiative and Troy Young, President of Hearst Digital Media was quoted as saying “The report’s videos and screenshots are incredibly helpful and make the Coalition’s research actionable for our teams. We’re impressed with the level of detail and transparency Google is providing and commend this initiative.”

Publishers rely on online ads to help fund their work, but they also rely on users to see it, so it’s great news to see Google doing more to help publishers serve ads that are relevant, less intrusive and of course less annoying!