How to Stay Ahead of the Google Chrome Ad Blocker

Google is about to change your web experience by turning on a Google Chrome ad blocker in the browser that automatically blocks ads that meet certain criteria created by the Coalition for better ads. It should come as no surprise that Google is investing even more in user experience by penalizing sites that use certain intrusive advertising practices.

As customer-first marketers, we should take a page out of Google’s book when making decisions around how to provide value to our customers, prospects, and audience. So let’s find out what you need to do to make sure your organization is not impacted by the new rules.

There’s more to compliance with the Google Chrome Ad Blocker rules than you might think.

It’s important to understand that Google’s definition of an ad is broad.

Google is penalizing sites that forcibly redirect users’ search intent. It doesn’t matter if you’re pushing a conversion or sharing an inspirational quote — yes, those Forbes interstitials will qualify as bad ads in Google’s book — if you make it difficult for the user to get the information or experience they came to the page for through the search engine results page, Google is out to block you.

The types of ads that do not follow Google’s rules, courtesy of the Coalition for Better Ads.

So while it can’t hurt to glance through a checklist and make sure you don’t have bad ad experiences, there’s no substitute for looking at how your content corresponds to keyword rankings for and making sure they line up.

Google puts user experience first, and that includes ad blocking.

A common misconception about Google is that they are obsessed with making marketers lives more difficult with all of their updates and changes, which is not the case.  They are, in fact, obsessed with user experience because they want people to continue to use their search engine so they can continue to serve them ads.

With that said, Google is improving its product and wants to provide the best user experience it possibly can to achieve that end goal. Consumers want Google to surface the content they search for quickly and without interruptions. That’s a great experience.

Think more about search intent and compelling content.

Digital advertisers will have to think a lot more like SEO strategists and content marketers. They’ll need to create compelling content that aligns with search intent. While the best digital advertisers have been doing it this way for a while, it’s a change in mentality for a lot of the industry.

More changes from Google are coming, like factoring in mobile page speed as an important ranking factor.

While page speed being a ranking factor is not a new concept, Google confirming that it will play a larger part in mobile in a formal announcement speaks to its importance.  With that being said, there’s a lot that marketers can do:

• If your site isn’t built in responsive design, consider moving to this architecture so that Google only has 1 URL to deal with.
• If your site is image heavy, such as an ecommerce site, ensure you are using scaled down versions of your images and have compression applied to them.
• Utilizing Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool can help you identify an amalgam of issues and provide suggestions on how to solve them.

Ultimately the goal is to have your site move as fast as possible, so anything that you can do to achieve that is the right way to go.

Every piece of content you create should provide value to your audience. Learn some key strategies that will help you understand your audience’s behavior and create content that puts your customers first.

Select quotes from this piece originally appeared in a post on DMN.

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