Google has just released its Ad Safety Report for 2023, revealing that the company prevented or removed more than 5.5 billion ads and 12.7 million ad accounts for policy violations. A central focus of the report was the utilisation of Generative AI, both as a tool for generating malicious ads and for detecting them.
The tech giant took action against 206.5 million ads for breaching its misrepresentation policy, including various scam tactics. Google also addressed 273.4 million ads for contravening its financial services policy. Over 1 billion ads were blocked or removed for flouting the policy against abusing the ad network, which includes the promotion of malware.
Ads were blocked or restricted from appearing on over 2.1 billion publisher pages. Google implemented broader site-level enforcement measures on more than 395,000 publisher sites, a significant increase from 2022.
"Our goal is to catch bad ads and suspend fraudulent accounts before they make it onto our platforms or remove them immediately once detected. AI is improving our enforcement on all fronts. In 2023, we blocked or removed over 5.5 billion ads, slightly up from the prior year, and 12.7 million advertiser accounts, nearly double from the previous year. Similarly, we work to protect advertisers and people by removing our ads from publisher pages and sites that violate our policies, such as sexually explicit content or dangerous products," Duncan Lennox, VP and GM of Ads Privacy and Safety, Google, said in a statement.
"In 2023, we blocked or restricted ads from serving on more than 2.1 billion publisher pages, up slightly from 2022. We are also getting better at tackling pervasive or egregious violations. We took broader site-level enforcement action on more than 395,000 publisher sites, up markedly from 2022," Lennox added.
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Political ads play a crucial role in democratic elections, allowing candidates and parties to raise awareness, disseminate information, and engage potential voters.
"In a year with several major elections around the world, we want to make sure voters continue to trust the election ads they may see on our platforms. That’s why we have long-standing identity verification and transparency requirements for election advertisers, as well as restrictions on how these advertisers can target their election ads. All election ads must also include a 'paid for by' disclosure and are compiled in our publicly available transparency report," Lennox noted.
As per Google's policy, all election ads are required to include a "paid for by" disclosure. The platform verified over 5,000 new election advertisers and removed over 7.3 million election ads from advertisers who did not complete the verification process.