Coalition for Better Ads Releases Initial Better Ads Standards for Desktop and Mobile Web in North America and Europe

Extensive Consumer Research Defines First Set of the Most Objectionable Ad Experiences

Washington, DC, Brussels, March 22, 2017 — The Coalition for Better Ads today released initial Better Ads Standards for desktop and mobile web that reflect consumer advertising preferences in North American and European markets. The initial Better Ads Standards are based on comprehensive research in which consumers comparatively ranked different ad experiences presented to them while they read online articles. More than 25,000 consumers rated 104 ad experiences for desktop web and mobile web.

The Coalition’s research identifies the ad experiences in both North America and Europe that ranked lowest across a range of user experience factors, and that are most highly correlated with an increased propensity for consumers to adopt ad blockers. These results define initial Better Ads Standards that identify the ad experiences that fall beneath a threshold of consumer acceptability. Six desktop web ad experiences and twelve mobile web ad experiences fell beneath this threshold. The Coalition encourages the marketplace to use these results to improve the consumer experience.

“We are energized by how quickly this cross-industry Coalition was able to research and identify annoying advertising formats,” said Jason Kint, CEO of Digital Content Next. “There is still much work to be done but we are out of the gate in our work to make the web less annoying for the average consumer.”

Read the whole press release on IAB Europe webpage.