Google announced they efforts to combat "bad ads," ads that are manipulative, spammy and sometimes illegal.
Google said that in 2014 they've disabled more than 524 million bad ads and banned more than 214,000 advertisers in 2014. They shared the break down of what this consists of:
Combating counterfeiters: Our relentless crackdown on counterfeit goods is producing powerful results. We banned 7,000 advertisers for promoting counterfeit goods, down from 14,000 in 2013 (and 82,000 in 2012), demonstrating that counterfeiters are increasingly unable to circumvent our advanced enforcement systems.
Protecting against malicious software: To protect the safety and security of our users, we stop all ads pointing to sites where we find malware - whether it’s spyware, adware or other types of malicious software. Last year we removed 250,000 sites from our network for hiding forms of malware.
Weighing in against weight loss scams: While many advertisers selling dietary supplements provide accurate information, some bad actors use outrageous claims to entice consumers. In 2014 TrustInAds.org, a group which includes Google, AOL, Yahoo and others, released a report showing that we had collectively removed or rejected more than 2.5 million ads related to weight loss and dietary supplements over the past 18 months.
With this infographic:
WebmasterWorld moderator said on this news:
I find some of these numbers amusing. Some are legit; but just because a new advertiser doesn't know they can say "Click here to learn more" or they can't use two ! in an ad - G automatically disables it and their 'bad ads' credit goes up. I applaud them for removing a lot of malware and other really bad ads; but it would be much more informative to see this broken down into minor policy violations vs the actual number of bad actors involved.
Do you think these numbers are legit?
Forum discussion at Google+ and WebmasterWorld.
