Google: Google blocked or removed over 5.2 billion ads for violating policies – Times of India

Google has announced that, in 2022, it removed over 5.2 billion ads that violated its policies. That’s more than 9,000 ads per minute, the company said. In addition, the search engine giant restricted over 4.3 billion ads and suspended over 6.7 million advertiser accounts last year. As per the company, it added or updated 29 policies for advertisers and publishers last year.
Google noted that the latest data represents an increase of 2 billion more ads removed in 2022 than in 2021. “We also blocked or restricted ads from serving on over 1.5 billion publisher pages and took broader site-level enforcement action on over 1,43,000 publisher sites,” the company said.

How Google removes ‘bad’ ads
The company announced that it relies on a combination of human reviews and automated systems powered by artificial intelligence and machine learning to enforce its ad policies at a large scale.
“Despite our continued efforts, bad actors increasingly operate at a greater scale and with more sophistication. They use a variety of tactics to evade detection,” Google said.
At the end of 2022 and into the new year, the company found a targeted campaign of scammers creating thousands of accounts to spread malware by impersonating popular software brands.

The company claims that it blocked and removed tens of thousands of malicious advertisements over one month. “In 2022, we blocked or removed 142 million advertisements for violating our misrepresentation policy and 198 million advertisements for violating our financial services policy,” the company noted.
‘Removed 51.2 million ads for inappropriate content’
In 2022, Google claimed that it removed over 51.2 million ads for inappropriate content, including hate speech, violence and harmful health claims and 20.6 million ads for dangerous products or services such as weapons and explosives.
Google Ads Transparency Center
Google has also launched an Ads Transparency Center, a “searchable hub” that has a library of ads from verified advertisers. With this, users can get information about the ads they are seeing. This includes the ads an advertiser has run, which ads were shown in a certain region, the last date an ad ran, and the format of the ad.