A coalition of ad buyers and sellers including Google and Facebook, as well over 80 trade associations from all over the world has published a new set of better ads standards for desktop and mobile web that it says reflect consumer advertising preferences in North American and European markets. The Coalition for Better Ads said the standards are based on a survey of around 25,000 users in the UK, Germany, Italy and Spain, who rated 104 ad experiences in simulated desktop and mobile environments. They identified six types of desktop web ads and 12 types of mobile ads as falling beneath a threshold of consumer acceptability, including pop-up ads, auto-play video ads with sound, prestitial ads with countdown and large sticky ads.

The voluntary standards are part of an industry response to the rise of ad blocking software, with the coalition expressing the hope that the research serves as a wake-up call to brands, retailers, agencies, publishers and technology suppliers. The industry needs to “retire the ad formats that research proves annoy and abuse consumers," according to IAB CEO Randall Rothenberg. "If they don’t, ad blocking will rise, advertising will decline, and the marketplace of ideas and information that supports open societies and liberal economies will slide into oblivion,” he said.