6:00 AM
Paul B
Just when I get excited to finally find a decent Adsense alternative in 2018, and start making real money again with Bauer-Power, I find out that Google announced something that may screw me over once again!
Apparently last month on December 19th, Google said that they were joining the Coalition for Better Ads, and will crack down on sites that fall short of industry standards starting in February. Examples are sites that repeatedly show autoplay videos, and full-page or pop-up ads.
From their announcement:
Yesterday, the Coalition for Better Ads announced the "Better Ads Experience Program." This Program provides guidelines for companies like Google on how they can use the Better Ads Standards to help improve users' experience with ads on the web.
In June, we announced Chrome's plans to support the Better Ads Standards in early 2018. Violations of the Standards are reported to sites via the Ad Experience Report, and site owners can submit their site for re-review once the violations have been fixed. Starting on February 15, in line with the Coalition's guidelines, Chrome will remove all ads from sites that have a "failing" status in the Ad Experience Report for more than 30 days. All of this information can be found in the Ad Experience Report Help Center, and our product forums are available to help address any questions or feedback.
We look forward to continuing to work with industry bodies to improve the user experience for everyone.
Now, my sites don't offer autoplay videos, or full-page ads. We do sometimes show overlays though for mobile users. It's unclear how this change will affect us, and that is kind of scary.
If you look at our stats, almost half of our visitors use Chrome to view Bauer-Power!
Via The Hill:
Sites will be able to appeal their status to Google after they change their advertising practices.
The move may be popular among internet users who are annoyed by obtrusive ads, but it could also bring opposition from sites that rely on revenue streams from such ads.As someone who has tried to use the Google appeals process after being kicked off of Adsense years ago, I can tell you that their appeals process isn't very smooth. In fact, they deny 99.999% of appeals.
It kind of makes me think that this is more of a move to squash their competition. After all, Google Adsense is still the number one advertising player in the game. If they can find a reason to not display ads from their competitors in their browser, wouldn't it make sense that they are doing this for selfish reasons?
What do you think about this news? Let us know in the comments!
