Google took down more than 3.2bn ‘bad ads’ in 2017 as part of its efforts to curb those who are misusing their ad network. For illustration, in 2016 the company reported it removed 1.7bn such ads.
Furthermore, Google also says it blocked 79m ads on its network last year for automatically sending people to malware-laden sites, and removed 400,000 of these unsafe sites.
The numbers also include 66m “trick to click” ads, which imitate system warnings to deceive users into clicking on them, and 48m ads that tricked users into installing unwanted software.
When it comes to publishers, Google reports they removed 320,000 bad publishers from its ad network, in an attempt to „remove the economic incentives for sites to create and spread deceptive content online.“
More than 7,000 AdWords accounts for “tabloid cloaking” violations, up from 1,400 in 2016. Google defines tabloid cloakers as scammers that try to game the system by pretending to be news. Once a user clicks, they’re directed to site that’s trying to sell something like a weight-loss product, not a news story.
In 2017 Google added 28 new advertiser policies and 20 new publisher policies whose aim is to combat new threats and improve the advertising experience online, and this year they plan to add additional policies that will „address ads in unregulated, overly complex, or speculative financial products“.
