Microsoft’s Edge and Naver Corporation’s Whale have joined the Coalition for Better Ads program as Browser Partners and will promote compliance with the Better Ads Standards.

The Coalition expanded the Standards for desktop and mobile web to all countries and regions worldwide, effective 9 May, 2019. The Coalition’s Better Ads Experience Program certifies web publishers that agree not to use the most disruptive ads identified in the Standards. The Program’s online register of certified companies helps advertising partners identify publishers who apply the Standards.

Certified companies will not have ads on their sites filtered based on the Standards by browsers that participate in the Program. The Program includes an independent dispute resolution mechanism developed by the Advertising Self-Regulatory Council in consultation with the International Council for Advertising Self-Regulation.

The ad experiences in the Standards are based on the Coalition’s extensive research, which has involved more than 66,000 consumers to date in countries representing 70 per cent of global online advertising spending. The research found strong alignment of consumer preferences across countries and regions for the most- and least-preferred online ad experiences, supporting the adoption of the same Better Ads Standards for desktop and mobile web globally. The Better Ads Standards identify the ad experiences that fall beneath a threshold of consumer acceptability and are most likely to drive consumers to install ad blockers.

“Promotion of the Coalition’s Standards by Microsoft and NAVER as part of the Better Ads Experience Program will encourage their adoption and benefit consumers around the world,” said Neal Thurman, director of the Coalition for Better Ads. “We urge everyone in the digital advertising supply chain to end the use of these ad formats that consumers have identified as most annoying and disruptive to their online experience.”

Many industry participants in N. America and Europe have incorporated the Better Ads Standards for desktop and mobile web into their business practices since their publication in March 2017. The Standards have been adopted by a wide range of individual advertisers, ad tech companies, ad agencies, and publishers. Industry trade associations have incorporated the Standards into their certification programs and recommendations of best practices to their members.