[Affiliate FAQ] Will Chrome 80 Kill Push Notifications?
The bigger part of the affiliate world is anxiously expecting February the 4th. That’s the day when the fate of Push Notification ads will be sealed.
Google Chrome version 80 rolls out next month, and although we cannot say with utmost certainty how the final updates would look like (it’s totally up to Google), we’ve summarized the most likely changes.
What’s going to change?
Google says that it cares about the future of Push Notifications and wants to protect this tool from the misuse.
What is meant by a “misuse?” Google considers aggressive and annoying opt-in requests, especially when a user first arrives at the website, a misuse.
The next steps will address this issue with notification permissions. The announced measures include:
Quieter permission UI
Chrome is changing the way opt-in requests will be shown.
In some cases, users won’t see a “traditional” permission dialog popup because Chrome will automatically block Push Notification requests. Users will see an indicator (bell) in the URL bar. Compare:
What’s important is that this change won’t be applied to ALL websites. Instead, Chrome specifies two scenarios, when opt-in requests will be blocked:
- 1. If a user is constantly blocking permission requests (most likely these people would never get into our subscriber base anyway. They are not Push Notifications target audience.)
- 2. If a website has low opt-in rates (meaning, most of the users have blocked Push Notifications on this website). Websites with high opt-in rates will not be affected.
What does all that mean for affiliates?
We asked our experts to comment on the upcoming updates.
Alexander Vasekin, Chief Revenue Officer at PropellerAds:
“First of all, we support Google and Chrome in their effort to establish specific rules for the Push Notifications market and believe that these steps towards more stability and trust will pay off in the long run.
According to the Chrome blog, there will be two major updates in version 80.
The first update – the history of interactions with websites’ opt-in requests will impact the way permission requests are displayed (UI) for each user individually.
I have some serious doubts about the auto-blocking mechanism Chrome is about to implement. It’s still unclear how it’s going to work in real life. Let’s say a visitor of “bad quality” websites, who is constantly blocking Push opt-in requests on these websites, visits the “famous news website.” According to new logic, the Push request on the “famous news website” should be muted. But you can’t really compare a “bad quality” to a news site, right? With this approach, the user will be deprived of some important website functionality.
The second update – websites with low opt-in rates will be “labeled,” and the entire permission requests UI will be switched to a “quiet mode.”
This update looks more realistic to me. A similar mechanism for webmasters already exists – Google Search Console, where website owners can receive important notifications on ad experience and search ranking changes. Webmasters have an idea of how to react to those “signals,” so using this communication channel to inform about issues with Push opt-in rate and give time to solve problems seems like a logical solution.
I’m confident that changes in Chrome 80 aren’t final, and we are about to see more gradual shifts and more discussions on this topic in 2020. Also, I believe that players who are monitoring the quality of traffic and advertising won’t experience any problems and will only benefit from these changes.”
Olga Dmitrenko, Sales Director at PropellerAds:
“We’ve been closely monitoring the situation. So far, after testing all the most recent beta-versions, we don’t see any radical changes that could seriously affect the Push Notification market.
As it was predicted in our Push Report, the subscription process is likely to become more complex. Still, again there’s nothing critical about that as we’re ready to adapt the way we collect Push subscriptions to the browser requirements.
Yes, the number of Push Notification subscribers might drop, yet the quality of leads is probably going to improve.
Now the market is full of players, who are reckless about the user experience, send way too many notifications, and turn this effective ad format into something rubbish.”
? Quick FAQ
- Will the lead quality change?
Yes, it will get better! Given how the subscription process is about to change, we are expecting the traffic quality to improve. You’ll get only the leads who are genuinely interested in seeing notifications.
2. How are the prices going to change?
The prices can go higher – that’s true, but together with the price, the user LTV will also increase. So, what we should talk about is performance. Essentially, you are not going to see any significant difference between your current spending and the spending after the Chrome updates.
3. Will we see less traffic?
There shouldn’t be any severe drops in Push traffic volumes. According to our tests, the subscription rates should remain the same or slightly decrease after Chrome 80 is released. Again, whatsoever fluctuations in traffic volumes will not impact the profitability of your campaigns, because the lead quality is likely to improve.
No matter how the situation will turn out, the fans of Push traffic can still run their favorite Push campaigns. How? We’re currently developing an innovative ad format – In-Page Push ads. Make sure to check it out!
We hope that all your questions on the future of Push Notifications were answered. If you still have questions left, please ask them in the comment section below. We’ll keep updating this post with new questions coming in.
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