Google to combat accidental ad clicks

Google is taking steps to reduce accidental clicks on mobile ads, including native advertising. The search engine giant believes accidental clicks - which wastes users’ time and forces advertisers to pay for unnecessary clicks - drive down revenue. According to Alphabet’s Q1 revenue report, cost per click (CPC) fell by 9%. Google will now ignore accidentally fast clicks on ads, and when a user clicks on the edge of an ad, focusing instead on when the middle of an ad is clicked. In a blog post, Google said: “We hope sharing insight on these protections helps raise awareness and guide the wider advertising ecosystem."

Everyone with a smartphone has accidentally thumbed over an ad they had absolutely no interest in seeing. Google wants to do something about it, while improving the user experience as well as advertising performance.

The tech giant has been working on reducing accidental clicks on ads for some time, but it's announcing today that it's extending the initiative from only dealing with search and displays ads to also entailing native ad formats. And Google is offering stats that illustrate why the larger effort is crucial to advertisers' return on investment.