Key Highlights
- Google blocked and removed 348 million adverts from its platform in 2022 for violating its policies.
- The adverts were said to have been placed to scam users on the platform.
- Google says despite its efforts, scammers continue to create thousands of new accounts and come up with new tactics to scam people.
Search giant, Google has said a total of 348 million advertisements placed on its platform were blocked and removed in 2022 for violating its policies. Of these numbers, the company said 142 million ads were blocked for violating its misrepresentation policy, while 198 million were removed for violating its financial services policy.
Google disclosed this in its 2022 Ads Safety Report just released. According to the company despite its continued efforts, bad actors increasingly operate at a greater scale and with more sophistication to push scam adverts on the platform. It said the scammers continue to use a variety of tactics to evade detection on the platform.
Scammer accounts on the rise
While noting that scammers and fraudsters are creating more accounts to defraud people on its platform, Google said:
- “For example, at the end of 2022 and into the new year, we faced a targeted campaign of scammers creating thousands of accounts to spread malware by impersonating popular software brands.
- “When we identify these coordinated threats, we urgently assess the situation and take action. In this example, we quickly identified how scammers were spreading their malware and put additional restrictions to block their ability to harm consumers. Over a one-month period, we blocked and removed tens of thousands of malicious advertisements and took action against the accounts associated with the bad ads.”
Google said though the scams are not unique to digital advertising, they could cause real financial harm, adding that it is committed to combating them on its platforms.
- “In 2022 we expanded our financial services certification program which requires advertisers to demonstrate that they are authorized by their local regulator to promote their products and services. This measure adds a new layer of security against fraudsters and further safeguards people from financial scams. To date, we’ve launched this program in 11 countries including the United Kingdom, Australia, and Singapore. Going forward, we intend to further expand this program,” Google added.
Tackling misinformation
Google said it has also we’ve developed extensive measures to tackle misinformation and unreliable claims in its advertising ecosystem. These, it said, include policies against harmful health claims and demonstrably false claims that could undermine trust and participation in elections.
- “We’ve also developed an industry-leading policy against climate change denial. In 2022, we blocked ads from running on over 300,000 publisher pages that violated these policies and blocked over 24 million policy-violating ads from serving. In addition, we blocked and 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,” it said.
The Google Ad Safety Report is an annual report that details how Google faired in its process of creating a safer experience for users in the ad ecosystem the year prior.
