Have you gone over your data allowance recently? Noticed that your battery is running low even faster?
Well it turns out this could be the work of dodgy, resource-demanding online ads. These ads might be used to mine cryptocurrency or simply be poorly programmed.
According to Google, despite making up a very small share of overall ads (0.3 per cent), these ads take up a disproportionate amount of network data (27 per cent) and CPU usage (28 per cent).
“In order to save our users’ batteries and data plans, and provide them with a good experience on the web, Chrome will limit the resources a display ad can use before the user interacts with the ad,” Chrome product manager Marshall Vale said.
“When an ad reaches its limit, the ad’s frame will navigate to an error page, informing the user that the ad has used too many resources.”
The thresholds are 4MB of network data and 15 seconds of CPU usage in any 30-second period or 60 seconds of total CPU usage.
Google is in the process of testing the feature and plans to have it live by August, giving ad creators enough time to prepare for the changes.
It comes as Google also prepares to discontinue third-party cookies by 2022 in a bid to boost privacy controls for users of the browser.
