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Google on Wednesday announced its Ad Safety Report 2022. The tech behemoth said that it removed 5.2 billion ads, restricted over 4.3 million ads, and suspended over 6.7 million advertiser accounts in 2022. In its report, Google stated that it has blocked or restricted ads from serving over 1.57 billion publisher pages across over 1,43,000 publisher sites compared to 63,000 in 2021.
The 5.2 billion ads that were removed by Google were due to policy violations such as abusing the ad network, trademark violations, legal requirements, misrepresentation, gambling and games, adult content, inappropriate content, dangerous products or services, sensitive events (like the war in Ukraine), enabling dishonest behaviour, alcohol, counterfeit goods, etc.
When it came to the 4.3 billion restricted ads, Google reported that these mainly comprised restricted businesses (550 million), local legal requirements (503 million), financial services (237 million), adult content (163 million), gambling and games (130 million), healthcare and medicines (124 million), copyrights (83.4 million) and alcohol (55 million).
Meanwhile, the 1.57 billion blocked publisher pages were related to categories including sexual content, dangerous or derogatory content, weapons promotions and sales, shocking content, tobacco, online gambling, alcohol sales, intellectual property abuse, malicious or unwanted software, and sexually explicit content.
As fraudulent activities continue to rise, Google said that although these are not unique to digital advertising, they can cause real harm. The company said that it is committed to countering such instances on its platform.
Google said that despite its continued efforts towards combating fraud, bad actors increasingly operated at a greater scale. The company said that whenever it identifies such threats, it urgently assesses the situation and takes action. In 2022, Google blocked or removed over 142 million advertisements for violating its misrepresentation policy and 198 million for violating its financial services policy.
Along with the report, Google has also announced the launch of its Ad Transparency Centre. The latest offering from Google will help users quickly learn more about the ads they see on Search, YouTube, and Display.
The Ad Transparency Centre derives from Google’s efforts to provide more information to users about the ads they see. The conceptualization began with the company coming up with a vetting process in the US in 2018 that required those planning to run election ads to undergo a verification process and include an in-ad disclosure that showed who paid for the ad. Later in 2020, Google took a step further and introduced the global advertiser identity verification program. And last fall, the company launched the My Ad Centre globally.
“The Ads Transparency Center is a searchable hub of all ads served by verified advertisers. This one-stop shop was designed with you in mind by ensuring you have easy access to information about the ads you see from Google,” reads Google’s official release.
Google has been consistently working towards enabling its publishers and advertisers through its numerous brand safety tools and resources. The company has, over the years, offered greater control to both users and advertisers. Google has policy enforcement at scale and is consistently working towards providing the safest solution.
“We provide them with a variety of brand safety tools for both advertisers and publishers, so the publishers can exclude the ads which they may not want to see on their website, and advertisers can restrict where their ads would appear. There are a variety of specific tools, including the ability to block specific topics/areas, create a dynamic exclusion list that can restrict specific sites for specific applications or specific apps on the publisher’s site,” Alejandro Borgia, Director, Ads Safety & Safety, told Indianexpress.com.
Borgia added that the broad range of tools gives a whole suite of brand safety capabilities for both publishers and advertisers.
