Better Ads Compliance Monitor

What We Monitor

The Coalition for Better Ads (CBA) defines standards for online advertising that fall below a threshold of consumer acceptability. Google Chrome enforces these by filtering all ads on non-compliant sites. This system automatically tests CNC properties against every applicable standard.

6

Desktop Standards

10

Mobile Standards

4

Video & Nav Standards

Chrome Ad Filtering — When Chrome detects repeated Better Ads violations, it blocks all ads on the site, including the publisher's own inventory. A single non-compliant placement can trigger total ad revenue loss.

Why It Matters

Revenue Protection

Chrome ad filtering removes all ads from non-compliant sites. For CNC properties dependent on programmatic revenue, a single violation can cascade into domain-wide ad loss.

Competitive Intelligence

Each CNC site is benchmarked against two competitor "twins" in the same vertical. This provides market context — are violations industry-wide or specific to us?

Early Warning

Daily sentinel runs detect violations within 24 hours. Slack alerts escalate critical findings to ad operations before Chrome's own crawler flags the issue.

Compliance Evidence

Every run produces timestamped evidence: screenshots, metrics, violation details. This trail supports compliance reviews and resolves disputes with ad networks.

Better Ads Standards Reference

All 20 standards tested by the system. Severity indicates the likelihood of Chrome triggering its ad blocker.

Critical — Chrome will block all ads

#1 / #5

Pop-up Ads

Ads that pop up and block the main content, displayed within the content area of the page.

DesktopMobilepopup-ads

critical

#2 / #11

Auto-playing Video with Sound

Video ads that auto-play with sound without user interaction to initiate audio.

DesktopMobileautoplay-video

critical

#9

Ad Density

Ads occupying more than 30% (mobile) or 50% (desktop) of the vertical page height.

DesktopMobilead-density

critical

#7

Ad Density + Sticky Video

Pages with ad density exceeding 30% combined with a sticky video player. Stricter threshold.

Desktopad-density-sticky-video

critical

#18

Non-skippable Video Interstitials

Full-screen video interstitial ads that cannot be skipped by the user.

Mobile Appnonskippable-video-interstitials

critical

#20

Long Pre-roll Ads

Pre-roll video ads longer than 31s without a skip option, or skip button appearing after 6s.

Videopre-roll-ads

critical

High — Likely to trigger filtering

#3

Prestitial Ads with Countdown

Full-page ads with a countdown timer appearing before content loads.

Desktopprestitial-countdown

high

#6

Prestitial Ads

Full-page ads that appear before page content is displayed, blocking access.

Desktopprestitial-ads

high

#4 / #12

Large Sticky Ads

Ads that stick to the edge of a page and cover more than 30% of the screen.

DesktopMobilesticky-ads

high

#10

Flashing Animated Ads

Ads with rapidly flashing animations (more than 3 flashes/sec). Seizure hazard.

Mobileflashing-ads

high

#11

Postitial Ads with Countdown

Full-page ads with countdown appearing when navigating away from a page.

Mobilepostitial-countdown

high

#13

Full-screen Scrollover Ads

Ads that take over the full screen as the user scrolls, covering >30% of viewport.

Mobilescrollover-ads

high

#24

Navigation Interstitial Ads

Interstitial ads appearing during page-to-page navigation within the site.

Navigationinterstitial-ads

high

#16

Interruptive Interstitials

Interstitial ads that interrupt the user's experience on mobile web or app.

Mobile Appinterruptive-interstitials

high

#17

Interruptive Video Interstitials

Video interstitial ads that interrupt the user's content consumption.

Mobile Appinterruptive-video-interstitials

high

#19

Page-load Video Interstitials

Video interstitial ads that play during page load, before user sees content.

Mobile Apppageload-video-interstitials

high

#21

Mid-roll Ads

Ads inserted in the middle of video content that interrupt viewing.

Videomid-roll-ads

high

Medium — May contribute to filtering

#14

Sticky Pop-out Video Ads

Video ads that pop out and stick to the viewport when scrolled past their original position.

Mobilesticky-popout-video

medium

#15

Sticky Video + Large Inline Ad

Combination of a sticky video player with a large inline ad, creating excessive coverage.

Mobilesticky-video-inline-ad

medium

#22

Large Display Overlay Ads

Overlay ads covering more than 20% of a video player, obstructing viewing.

Videodisplay-overlay-ads

medium

Measurement Thresholds

Specific numeric thresholds that determine pass/fail for each measurement.

Measurement	Device	Warning	Violation	Unit
Ad Density	Desktop	45%	50%	% of vertical page height
Ad Density	Mobile	25%	30%	% of vertical page height
Ad Density + Sticky Video	Desktop	—	30%	% of vertical page height
Sticky Ad Height	All	—	30%	% of viewport height
Flashing Animation	Mobile	—	>3	flashes per second
Scrollover Ads	Mobile	—	30%	% of viewport
Pre-Roll Skip	Video	—	>31s	seconds without skip
Skip Button Delay	Video	—	>6s	seconds until skip
Display Overlay	Video	—	20%	% of video player area
Autoplay Detection	All	—	5s	monitoring window

Warning thresholds are reported but do not constitute violations. They serve as early indicators that a page is approaching the boundary.

System Architecture

End-to-end flow from test execution through reporting and monitoring.

Consent Handler

Handles cookie consent popups across 6 CMP types:

Priority chain: Didomi → CPEx → Seznam TCF → Cookiebot → OneTrust → TCF v2 fallback → button text → iframe search

Ad Detector

Multi-strategy detection: selector matching, IAB size heuristics, text label detection ("Reklama", "Advertisement"), and CNC-specific wrapper classes (.cnc-ads__within). Each element carries a confidence rating: high, medium, or low.

Density Calculator

Pixel-row vertical projection with overlap deduplication. Projects all ad bounding rectangles onto a 1D vertical axis, merges overlapping ranges, and computes total ad height / content height = density %.

Screenshot Infrastructure

Deduplicated: one per site+device+URL (~50–150 per run). PNG→JPEG (quality 70) via Sharp. Indexed in OpenSearch with metadata. Batched bulk push: 20 per _bulk request.

Site Coverage

24 sites in 8 competitive triplets. Each triplet contains one CNC property and two competitor "twins" from the same content vertical.

8

CNC Properties

16

Competitor Twins

8

Triplet Groups

Vertical	CNC Site	Competitor 1	Competitor 2	CMP Types
News / Tabloid	Blesk.cz	Novinky.cz	iDNES.cz	Didomi / Seznam / Didomi
Sports	iSport.cz	Sport.cz	sport.idnes.cz	CPEx / Seznam / Didomi
Automotive	Auto.cz	auto.idnes.cz	Autoforum.cz	CPEx / Didomi / none
Business	E15.cz	ihned.cz	Aktualne.cz	Didomi / Didomi / Didomi
Opinion	Reflex.cz	Echo24.cz	Respekt.cz	Didomi / Didomi / Cookiebot
Women	proZeny	Prozeny.cz	ona.idnes.cz	Didomi / Seznam / Didomi
Video / TV	Blesk TV	CNN Prima	Stream.cz	Didomi / Didomi / Seznam
Blog	Opinio.cz	blog.idnes.cz	blog.aktualne.cz	Didomi / Didomi / Didomi

Dynamic URL enrichment — Test URLs are refreshed before each run via RSS feeds (CNC) and NavCrawler (competitors), so tests always run against current, real content pages.

Test Suites

Daily

Sentinel Suite

Risk-weighted subset at 06:00 daily. Focuses on 4 critical standards across all sites, with extended coverage for high-risk properties.

~183 tests

~8 min

Core: popup, autoplay, sticky, density
High-risk: + prestitial, scrollover, flashing, video

Weekly

Full Audit

Comprehensive audit of all 20 standards. Monday 04:00 (CNC), Wednesday 04:00 (competitors).

789 tests

~25 min

All 20 standards × all sites × 5 URLs
Outputs: compliance report, comparison, PDF brief

Risk Tier Assignment

Site	Risk	URLs	Specialty Tests	Video	Nav
Blesk.cz	high	3	prestitial, scrollover, flashing, sticky-popout	display-overlay, pre-roll	Yes
E15.cz	high	3	prestitial, scrollover, flashing	—	Yes
iSport.cz	high	3	prestitial, scrollover, flashing	—	Yes
proZeny	high	3	prestitial, scrollover, flashing	—	Yes
Reflex, Auto, Opinio, Blesk TV	low	2	—	—	No

Test Methodology

Each test follows a standardized pipeline from page load through violation detection.

1

Navigate

Load page with device viewport

2

Consent

Handle cookie banner via CMP

3

Stabilize

Wait for ads, suppress overlays

4

Detect

Multi-strategy ad scan

5

Measure

Density, height, timing

6

Report

Metrics + screenshot + index

Detection Methods by Standard

Standard	Detection Method	What's Measured
Pop-up Ads	DOM scan for overlays with z-index > content, positioned fixed/absolute	Overlay presence, size, dismissibility
Autoplay Video	Monitor audio context and video elements for 5s after load	Sound playback without user interaction
Sticky Ads	Scroll page, detect position:fixed/sticky elements that persist	Element height as % of viewport (>30%)
Ad Density	Full-page scan with pixel-row vertical projection, overlap dedup	Total ad height / page height
Prestitial	Detect full-page overlays before content renders	Blocking overlay presence, countdown
Flashing Ads	Frame-rate analysis over 3-second window	Flash frequency (>3/sec violation)
Pre-roll	Detect video ad before content, measure duration + skip	Length (>31s without skip)
Nav Interstitial	Click internal links, detect interstitial during navigation	Interstitial presence between pages

Data Pipeline

Test results flow through multiple reporters into persistent storage and monitoring.

OpenSearch Document Schema

Field	Type	Description
`@timestamp`	date	Test execution time (ISO 8601)
`run_id`	keyword	Unique run identifier
`site`	keyword	Site short name (lowercase)
`device`	keyword	desktop / mobile / video / navigation
`standard_code`	keyword	Test slug (e.g. ad-density)
`status`	keyword	passed / failed / skipped / errored
`ad_density_max`	float	Peak ad density percentage
`ad_count`	integer	Number of detected ad elements
`sticky_ad_max_pct`	float	Largest sticky ad as % of viewport
`suite`	keyword	daily / full
`priority_score`	integer	0–100 triage priority (failures only)

Index: better-ads-compliance (single index). Datasource: UID opensearch-betterads (ID 47). Screenshots stored as Base64 JPEG with doc_type: 'screenshot'.

Grafana Dashboards

The v6 dashboard suite provides 4 views for different investigation workflows.

Overview

ad6-overview

"Are we safe right now?" Leadership & QA view with compliance status, trend sparklines, and risk indicators.

Queue

ad6-queue

"What should I investigate first?" Priority-ranked failure queue sorted by severity, recurrence, and site importance.

Case File

ad6-case

"What exactly is this failure?" Deep-dive with screenshot evidence, metrics history, and selector details.

Compare

ad6-compare

"Are we better or worse?" Cross-site and CNC vs. competitor comparisons within triplet groups.

CI/CD Pipeline

Schedule	Cron	Suite	Sites	Jobs
Daily Sentinel	`0 6 * * *`	daily	CNC (8 sites)	4 parallel (desktop, mobile, video, nav)
Weekly Deep	`0 4 * * 1`	full	CNC (8 sites)	4 parallel + report generation
Weekly Competitors	`0 4 * * 3`	full	Competitors (16 sites)	4 parallel + comparison report

Runner: gitlab-ssh.cnci.tech
Registry: client-monitoring/ad-monitor
Artifacts: results/ directory (7-day retention)
Notifications: Slack #ad-monitor channel

Technology Stack

Playwright

Browser automation

TypeScript

Type-safe codebase

OpenSearch

Result storage

Grafana

Dashboards

GitLab CI

Scheduled runs

Slack

Alert notifications

Sharp

Screenshot compression

PDFKit

Compliance briefs

Claude AI

Visual verification

Project Structure

pw-ad-report/
├── src/
│   ├── config/         sites.ts, devices.ts, standards.ts, thresholds.ts
│   ├── fixtures/       consent-handler.ts (Playwright fixture)
│   ├── reporters/      summary, opensearch, slack, shared
│   ├── utils/          ad-detector, density-calculator, dynamic-urls
│   ├── cli/            verify, audit, PDF brief, weekly report
│   └── types/          TypeScript interfaces
├── tests/
│   ├── desktop/        7 desktop Better Ads specs
│   ├── mobile/         7 mobile Better Ads specs
│   ├── video/          pre-roll, mid-roll, display overlay
│   ├── navigation/     interstitial ads
│   └── unit/           density calculator, ad detector
├── grafana/suite/      dashboard builders → JSON → deploy
├── verification/       independent verification (5 methods)
├── results/            JSON, HTML, CSV, screenshots
└── portal/             this portal + report generator

Better Ads Compliance Monitor

Compliance Reports

Evidence Review

Ad Audit Browser

What We Monitor

Why It Matters

Revenue Protection

Competitive Intelligence

Early Warning

Compliance Evidence

Better Ads Standards Reference

Critical — Chrome will block all ads

High — Likely to trigger filtering

Medium — May contribute to filtering

Measurement Thresholds

System Architecture

Site Coverage

Test Suites

Sentinel Suite

Full Audit

Risk Tier Assignment

Test Methodology

Detection Methods by Standard

Data Pipeline

OpenSearch Document Schema

Grafana Dashboards

Overview

Queue

Case File

Compare

CI/CD Pipeline

Technology Stack

Project Structure