Google has released its annual ‘bad ads’ statistics, and every year the company gets faster and more efficient at removing ads that violate its policies.
Over 3.2 billion bad ads were removed in 2017, which is an average of 100 bad ads removed every second.
This number represents a majority of ads that violated Google’s policies last year. Google was able to remove most of them before they were shown to other people.
Among the bad ads that were removed, there were:
- 79 million attempting to send people to malware-laden sites
- 66 million “trick-to-click” ads
- 48 million ads attempting to get users to install unwanted software
A total of 320,000 ad publishers were removed from Google’s ad network last year. In addition, the company banned 90,000 websites and 700,000 mobile apps from being able to display Google ads. Most common violations of Google’s publisher policies include scraping, duplicating, and copying content from other sites.
Google introduced 28 new advertiser policies last year, as well as 20 new publisher policies. So far this year, Google has updated its policies to ban cryptocurrency-related advertisements.
In the near future Google will revisit its policies related to advertising for addiction treatment centers. Google will introduce a certification process for rehabilitation facilities which will allow legitimate treatment centers to “connect with people in need.” In other words, those that pass Google’s certification process will again be able to run ads.
