Google’s recent announcement to block advertisements that the company thinks are “intrusive” has raised some doubts among publishers in India, Times of India reported.
“Premium quality publishers like The Indian Express, The Times of India and India Today will not have to worry about this development as they themselves want to give a better experience to their readers and less invasive ads is a market trend that we are always preparing for,” said Anant Goenka, executive director, The Indian Express. “But certainly, Google needs to be a little less dictatorial in how they conduct their business. Along with user experience, Google needs to put an equal emphasis on creating a sustainable digital marketing ecosystem.”
However, Scott Spencer, director of product management at Google said the move, which will be effective from February 15, is “to improve the online ad experience for users.” Although the default blocking could be turned off by the users, the publishers are skeptical about the company’s move.
“Google already controls over 60% of the ad industry. By setting standards on what ads are acceptable or not, Google is effectively regulating the entire digital ad industry, including its competitors – a role that no company should have the authority to do,” expressed Gautam Sinha, CEO, Times Internet Limited (TIL).
Sinha said the move will be more detrimental to the smaller publishers. “Free content and plurality of views is a consumer need which is funded by ads today. If Google decides to tighten the strings on this, smaller publishers won’t be able to sustain their businesses,” he added.
Similar views were expressed by others in the industry. “Large-scale publishers have already realized the need to have less intrusive ads. We stopped those formats long back. There might be certain new sites that have click-bait content or fake content which will be impacted by this,” said Dainik Bhaskar Digital CEO Gyan Gupta.