It’s here: the ad blocker that will change the world…or so we thought.

February 15 was the launch of the ad blocking extension of Google Chrome that had every advertiser shaking in their desk chairs about digital advertising’s vitality. Advertisers and publishers scrambled to find out exactly how digital ads would be effected in this new advertising environment, but it turns out the speculation was not worth the grey hair and late nights. According to a report by Axios, (as told in an article by MediaPost) only one percent of publishers have found to be noncompliant with Google’s new ad blocker.

As part of Google’s advertising audit, it reviewed over 100,000 websites in North America and Europe. Just a few of the infractions Google, in partnership with the Coalition for Better Ads, were looking for were auto playing in-line video with sound, full page take overs, and certain types of pop-up ads. Google also reported 37 percent of publishers who had previous violations of the new ad restrictions were found to have fixed them way ahead of the February 15 implementation.

Google’s ad blocker will do a lot of good for the digital ad environment by blocking intrusive ads that negatively effect user experience. Google’s ad blocker is another step the industry is taking to better the digital ad experience, improve ad quality, and increase digital return-on-investment. However, the ad tech industry needs to curb its doomsday prophecies about such changes until we know how it will truly affect all of us – instead of speculating about an ad blocker a year before it’s capabilities are known. This Google ad blocker is a prime example. Quantifi Digital published a blog post in late December 2017 talking about the IOS 11 cookie Armageddon, another digital advertising end-of-days that did not break the Internet as previously imagined and actually bettered the ad tech industry. In that blog post, we touched on the growing panic about Google’s ad blocker. Now that it is here, we can view this ad blocker in a more positive light to see it as it truly is: a step toward a better industry. The industry of ad tech is always trying to improve quality for its advertisers. While the journey is not over, ad tech is still a valuable, hyper-targeted way to advertise.

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