Google blocked or removed more than 9,000 advertisements per minute in 2022, the company announced in its Ad Safety Report 2022. The search engine giant added that it removed 5.2 billion ads, suspended over 6.7 million advertiser accounts and restricted over 4.3 million ads last year. The tech giant also mentioned in its Ad Safety Report 2022 that it has blocked or restricted ads from serving over 1.57 billion publisher pages across over 1,43,000 publisher sites compared to just 63,000 in 2021.
Even as the company is working towards combating fraud, bad actors are continuing to operate at a greater scale. Google blocked or removed over 142 million advertisements for violating its 'misrepresentation policy' and 198 million for violating its financial services policy, in a bid to check fraudulent activities.
Furthermore, the tech giant blocked the 1.57 billion publisher pages related to categories including sexual content, dangerous or derogatory content, weapons promotions and sales, shocking content, tobacco, alcohol sales, online gambling, intellectual property abuse, malicious or unwanted software as well as sexually explicit content.
Among the 4.3 billion restricted ads, the company mentioned that these mainly comprised restricted businesses (550 million), local legal requirements (503 million), adult content (163 million), gambling and games (130 million), healthcare and medicines (124 million), financial services (237 million), copyrights (83.4 million) and alcohol (55 million).
The company has also announced the launch of its 'Ad Transparency Centre' that aims to help users quickly learn more about the ads they see on Search, YouTube and Display.
“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,” the company said in its release.
Meanwhile, the 5.2 billion ads that Google pulled were due to policy violations, including ad network, gambling and games, adult content, inappropriate content, dangerous products or services, sensitive events (like the war in Ukraine), trademark violations, legal requirements, misrepresentation, enabling dishonest behaviour, alcohol, counterfeit goods, etc.