Google blocked 2.7 billion ‘bad ads’ in 2019

Google has blocked and removed over 2.7 billion “bad ads” in 2019 according to its recent ‘Google: Bad Ads Report.’

Bad ads are advertisements that violate Google’s policies and are ads published by “malicious actors.”

The search giant had also suspended nearly 1 million advertiser accounts for policy violations. On the publisher side, Google had terminated over 1.2 million accounts and removed ads from over 21 million web pages that were part of its publisher network for violating its policies.

“Terminating accounts—not just removing an individual ad or page—is an especially effective enforcement tool that we use if advertisers or publishers engage in egregious policy violations or have a history of violating policy,” Google said.

The tech giant also highlighted different types of malicious ads that it had flagged and blocked that were meant to target users.

Phishing and trick-to-click ads

Two of the most common types of bad advertisements noticed by the search giant that was meant to trick users were phishing ads and “trick to click ads.”

“One of the areas that we’ve become familiar with is phishing, a common practice used by deceptive players to collect personal information from users under false pretences,” Google said.

For instance, in 2019, Google had noticed bad actors trying to target users through phishing ads for people seeking to renew their passports that mimicked real ads for renewal sites.

The real intent of these fraudulent ads was to get sensitive information such as social security or credit card number from users.

“Another common area of abuse is “trick-to-click” ads—which are designed to trick people into interacting with them by using prominent links (for example, “click here”) often designed to look like computer or mobile phone system warnings,” it said.

Google in 2019 had assembled an internal team to track the patterns and signals of these types of fraudulent advertisers to identify and remove such ads faster.

Google saw approximately 50 per cent decrease of bad ads served in both these categories as compared to the year before. Overall, the tech major had blocked over 35 million phishing ads and 19 million “trick-to-click” ads in 2019.

Another type of malicious ads flagged by the company was ads containing misleading information on lending terms. To combat this, it only allowed loan-related ads to run if the advertiser “clearly states all fees, risks and benefits on their website or app so that users can make informed decisions.”

This helped Google takedown 9.6 million such bad ads in 2019.

Bad ads at the time of Covid-19

Google is especially cracking down on misinformation and bad ads during the global Covid-19 pandemic.

It has noticed sophisticated actors attempting to evade its enforcement systems with advanced tactics. In an example shared by the company, it saw a sharp spike in fraudulent ads for in-demand products like face masks.

“These ads promoted products listed significantly above market price, misrepresented the product quality to trick people into making a purchase or were placed by merchants who never fulfilled the orders,” Google said.

The tech major has established a dedicated COVID-19 task force who have built a new detection technology while improving Google’s existing enforcement systems to stop bad actors.

“We’ve blocked and removed tens of millions of coronavirus-related ads over the past few months for policy violations including price-gouging, capitalizing on global medical supply shortages, making misleading claims about cures and promoting illegitimate unemployment benefits,” Google said.

“Simultaneously, the coronavirus has become an important and enduring topic in everyday conversation and we’re working on ways to allow advertisers across industries to share relevant updates with their audiences. Over the past several weeks, for example, we’ve specifically helped NGOs, governments, hospitals and healthcare providers run PSAs,” it further said.