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Websites are already able to serve up ads customized for whoever happens to be viewing a page. Now an ad agency in Russia is taking that idea one step further with an outdoor billboard that’s able to automatically hide when it spots the police coming.

With the aid of a camera and facial recognition software, the technology was slightly tweaked to instead recognize the official symbols and logos on the uniforms worn by Russian police. And as they approached the billboard featuring the advertisement for Don Giulio Salumeria’s imported Italian goods, it would automatically change to an ad for a Matryoshka doll shop instead.

We all hate popups, especially on a mobile device, so it's nice that Google has started to penalise sites which show interruptions. Thanks to new regulations, any mobile web page that uses interstitials or pop-up ads will see their Google ranking tumble. 

The new rules have only been in place for a short while, but there are no reports of widespread impacts yet – likely because Google did give a significant warning period for people to adjust their web sites.

In summary, if a web page puposely hides content behind an ad or forces interaction with an ad, Google doesn’t like it. For now, these changes only apply to mobile versions of a site, so desktop pages are safe. But get rid of popups on desktop also, they're really annoying for everyone.