• by Melynda Fuller , January 2, 2018

Google, already a stalwart of digital advertising, taking 42% of total digital ad revenue dollars, is gearing up to launch its Chrome ad blocker on February 15. The approaching date has some publishers worried. 

Working in partnership with the Coalition for Better Ads, Chrome’s blocker is intended to weed out annoying ads—including full-page ads and ads that include flashing or autoplay sound and video—to give users a better digital experience.

Websites that violate the new standards will be given 30 days to scrub sites free of the offending content. Or, Google will block their ads. The sites will be given a chance at a manual review to have standardized ads reinstated after the flagged ads have been removed. 

The troubling part of these new regulations is related to the struggles many small and large publishers face when trying to reach advertising revenue goals. Google, which holds such a large stake in the advertising arena, wields insurmountable power when it comes to advertising.

The enforcement of the regulations could put greater strain on already-struggling outlets as they lose precious revenue dollars because of blocked or removed advertising. The money lost during a suspended period could prove deadly to struggling media outlets.

Some companies, like Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp, are trying to claim a piece of the advertising pie away from Google in a more traditional sense. News Corp introduced its News IQ ad platform late last year in an attempt to offer “brand safe” advertising across its many publishing properties.

News Corp boasts 140 million unique users in the U.S. alone and has specialized data that will allow advertisers to reach specific customers. Disney, NBC, and Verizon have all taken similar steps to target specific customers within their networks.

However, even media powerhouses like News Corp are subject to Chrome’s new blocker — and there is the dilemma.

As digital media companies fight to raise ad revenue, competing with Google and Facebook, is it ethical for one of the biggest accumulators of ad revenue to dictate how those ads are displayed across a proprietary browser? Is it fair to threaten suspension, should outlets not meet those standards? 

Like all aspects of digital ad revenue and publishing, it is uncertain how Chrome’s blocker will affect media companies. But as some of the biggest names in media scramble to determine how to create their own ad-revenue streams, Google's obstacles impede another key concern: press diversity.