Dive Brief:

• Google is considering creating an "acceptable ads" policy to combat the growing use of ad blocking technology, sources with knowledge of Google's plans told Digiday. 
• It's not yet clear how Google would implement such a policy. Digiday suggests "a likely scenario" would have the internet giant only allowing "acceptable ads" to run on Google, YouTube and through its Double Click ad exchange. 
• Google did not comment on the report, pointing only to a previous statement made by it's SVP of Ads and Commerce Sridhar Ramaswamy that the industry needs "to work together to come up with a definition of what an acceptable ad is and what an acceptable ads program can be."

Dive Insight:

With no real end in sight to the ad blocking debate, Google—whose $21 billion business is built on online advertising—is getting ready to weigh in, Digiday reports. The ad blocking debate has come to a head recently as consumers are becoming increasingly fed up with invasive, annoying and relentless advertising online. 

Until now, the advertising and publishing industry's responses to the surge in ad blocking has been too inconsistent and weak to have a significant impact on the issue.

Publishers have responded to ad blockers in a variety of ways, from the hard line approach of blocking ad blocking users to the decidedly softer strategy of doing nothing at all. The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), the trade association for advertisers, recently sought to address the challenge as well, putting out a series of scoring guidelines for publishers, advertisers and agencies to adhere to its Light, Encrypted, AdChoices-supporting and Non-invasive (LEAN) advertising principles.

However, as Digiday points out, publishers' approaches to ad blocking are scattershot while the IAB's is unenforceable—problems that Google's mooted "acceptable ads" policy would help resolve. 

The move by Mountain View, Calif.-based company would be the most significant development in the ad blocking saga so far in 2016, as Google holds significant influence in the online advertising world to make both publishers and advertisers get in line and address the issue.