Online advertising isn’t all bad, but it’s an industry in constant debate and reform. Here are the latest updates on online advertising in the past couple of days:

Google exploring an “acceptable” ads policy

We all hate intrusive or slow-loading ads on the Internet — you know, the ones that pop up in your face on full-blast volume and hide the tiny, dark “close” button all the way in the corner. Yeah, those…

We’d prefer not to have ads at all, but that’s just not going to happen. Although, what’s trending is the call for safe web-browsing and “acceptable” online advertising — an initiative that’s now joined by one of the biggest players in the game, Google.

Intrusive and slow-loading ads force readers to get ad blockers and be done with advertisements altogether. But a majority of Google’s businesses runs on advertising, so they’re taking online advertising seriously, and into their own hands, according to digiday.com.

As one of the big hitters in the online advertising industry, Google wants to do what no other individual publisher can do, and ensure that online advertising isn’t obtrusive or annoying.

Google backing the publishers in this initiative can clearly be the big push in “acceptable” ads becoming a reality, as they alone represent more than 30% of the total worldwide digital ad market, according to online advertising researcher eMarketer.

Although, Google is getting ridiculed by several publishers for taking the matter into their own hands and deciding what should be acceptable advertising and what shouldn’t be — they need to get input from publishers first.

A similar initiative has been around in the industry — the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) with a set of standards called L.E.A.N. (Light, Encrypted, Ad choice supported, Non-invasive). Although, association efforts, including the IAB’s, are not imposable, and individual publishers can’t change the fact that ad blockers treat all sites as the same unless users choose to whitelist selected sites.

Publishers looking towards time-based payment for advertising

There are only a few rare occasions where an advertisement captures my attention, for example before a Youtube video. But it makes me wonder, why do these publishers continue to advertise in the same ways if I just skip the ad when the button becomes available after 5 seconds?

Publishers have been paying for advertising on a click-through-rate basis, meaning they pay for each user that clicks on their advertisement. But they’re seeing more and more users ignoring advertisements (which I know I do too), resulting in only 56% of ads on desktop classified as viewed, according to analytics company Moat.

This has urged the exploration of time-based advertising payment, that being, publishers paying per-second or per-hour of advertisement viewed. It’s a great alternative and appropriate solution to the publishers’ problem, as rather than forcing advertisers to create more engaging, attention-grabbing, or flashy and intrusive advertisements, they’re creating normal, sincere ones and still seeing benefits.

Apparently, according to digiday.com, over 25 publishers are exploring the idea of selling on time and attention, including Dow jones and The Telegraph.