Chrome 85 adds support for blocking resource-intensive ads
It became known that the developers from Google have begun testing a new feature in the Chrome 85 browser. This is a tool for blocking resource-intensive ads that consumes a lot of traffic or creates a significant load on the CPU. Currently, the mentioned feature is available to a limited number of users, but after the completion of the testing phase, it will be distributed everywhere.
The new blocking feature disables iframes with advertising content if the main thread consumed more than 60 seconds of CPU time in total, or 15 seconds in a 30-second interval (more than 50% resource consumption is more than 30 seconds). In addition, the advertising content will be blocked if the block downloads more than 4 MB of data over the network. Automatic blocking is triggered if, until the above limits are exceeded, the user has not interacted with the advertisement, for example, did not click on it.
If an ad unit is blocked, the problematic iframe will be automatically replaced with a page with an informational message, which says that the ad was blocked due to excessive resource consumption. As examples of blocks to be blocked, there are advertisements with code for mining cryptocurrencies, handlers for large uncompressed images, etc.
The developers believe that the new feature will help get rid of advertising content with ineffective code implementation and deliberate parasitic activity. Advertising of this kind significantly increases the load on user devices and leads to slower loading of the main content, increases traffic consumption, and reduces battery life. According to Google’s calculations, only 0.3% of the total number of ad units will fall under the specified blocking criteria.