Google claims to have busted 780 million “bad” ads in 2015 – the equivalent of 25 years’ worth if you were to spend one second looking at each.
Figures released by the web giant reveal that more than 10,000 sites and 18,000 accounts were suspended last year for attempting to sell counterfeit goods such as imitation designer watches, while approximately 12.5 million ads were blocked for violating Google’s healthcare and medicines policy and 30,000 for weight loss scams.
Elsewhere, almost 7,000 sites were blocked in an effort to fight phishing (conning people out of sensitive information), 10,000 sites offering unwanted software were disabled, and unwanted downloads via Google ads were reduced by more than 99%.
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Meanwhile, a massive 17 million ‘misleading’ pop-ups – those designed to look like system warnings from computer devices – were rejected by Google in 2015 alone.
Google has even clamped down on the advertising which sits in the palm of our hand, with ads removed from more than 25,000 mobile apps for failing to comply with Google policy.
Of these, more than two-thirds were for practices such as mobile ads being placed close to buttons, causing accidental clicks.
“We’re always updating our technology and our policies based on your feedback – and working to stay one step ahead of the fraudsters,” said Sridhar Ramaswamy, Google’s senior vice president of ads and commerce.
“In 2016, we’re planning updates like further restricting what can be advertised as effective for weight loss, and adding new protections against malware and bots. We want to make sure all the ads you see are helpful and welcome and we’ll keep fighting to make that a reality.”
Despite the growth in digital advertising, it is clear that it still faces a number of challenges, with the news arriving this week that an estimated $7.2 billion will be lost to ad fraud in 2016.
The research, carried out by the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) and White Ops, revealed a significant increase in bot percentages over the last year – varying from 3% to 37% per advertiser in 2015, compared with 2% to 22% the previous year.
Programmatic ad trading continues to flag up concern, with programmatic video ads found to have a massive 73% more bots than the study average, while programmatic display ads were 14% above average.
