Advertising makes the internet go around, but there are times when it can bring it to an absolute standstill, gobble up your data and take a massive toll on your device’s battery life.
Google says no more. It has identified a fraction of ads displayed within its Google Chrome browser are consuming far too much data and having an adverse affect on the life-force of the smartphone or laptop in question.
As such, from August the company is expanding its Better Ads Standards policy to clamp down on advertisements that disproportionally consume resources without the user knowing about it.
The company says cryptocurrency mining apps are among the main culprits because they’re poorly designed and are constantly accessing networks. Google outlined the plan to combat these bad ads in a blog post on Thursday.
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Here’s the plan, directly from the Chromium blog: “In order to save our users’ batteries and data plans, and provide them with a good experience on the web, Chrome will limit the resources a display ad can use before the user interacts with the ad. When an ad reaches its limit, the ad’s frame will navigate to an error page, informing the user that the ad has used too many resources.”
Google says 0.3% of ads exceed a new threshold of exceeding a 4MB of network data, or 15 seconds of CPU usage in any 30-second period. Amazingly, these ads account to “27% of network data used by ads and 28% of all ad CPU usage.”
The company plans to roll out the change to the stable version of Chrome by August, which it says will give developers the opportunity to get their act together. Google, despite relying massively on online ads for its gigantic online empire is doing a little better when it comes to policing them and their effect on the web as a whole. This is another example.
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Editorial independence
Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.