Dive Brief:

• Google announced the launch of AdSense Labs, a new subtab under AdSense's “optimization” tab that allows publishers to beta test new features as Google adds them to the program.
• The first two tools available in the Lab are “show fewer ads” and “inline ads."
• According to a Google blog post, new tools will be added to Labs on an ongoing basis.

Dive Insight:

The “show fewer ads” tool is notable because it directly addresses the core issue in the ongoing ad block challenge faced by publishers, the end user experience. Spammy and annoying ads contribute to a bad user experience, but ad volume is often the main culprit when people complain about ads on a website.

Google’s "show fewer ads" feature within AdSense reduces the number ads displayed on publishers’ websites, giving website visitors a better user experience. Use of the tool leads only to a “negligible drop” in revenue, Google says. 

“It aims to remove at least 10% of the ads served on your site (1% or less of your revenue), by preventing low value ads from being shown to your users,” Emma Burrows, Google software engineer, wrote in a blog post. 

Research from the Interactive Advertising Bureau, Kargo and Refinery29 found that 73% of marketers say the user experience with digital marketing needs to improve. Poor user experience, along with ad fraud and malware, is one of the most cited reasons when people are asked why they installed ad block software.

Google is one of the few players in the online advertising space that can actually make a dent in improving the user experience. Industry organizations and federal regulators (at least for now) have no real teeth in enforcing any type of standard that improves the user experience. As the technology behind most digital ads served, if Google's push for publishers to “show fewer ads” results in real progress toward making the end user experience better, the new tool in beta may even help begin to stem the tide against ad block tech adoption.