Google Removes 2.3 Billion Bad Ads, Shifts Focus to Banning Accounts
Google reports removing 2.3 billion policy-violating ads in 2018 and introduces a new Ad Policy Manager. The company emphasizes a strategic shift toward terminating bad accounts entirely to prevent malicious ads at their source.
Google reveals that it removes 2.3 billion "bad ads" in 2018 by utilizing a combination of manual reviews and machine learning. These advertisements violate company policies by misleading or exploiting vulnerable users, and the tech giant also takes action against the publishers by pulling ads from 1.5 million apps and 28 million web pages.
The 2018 total shows a decrease of nearly 1 billion bad ads compared to the previous year, but Google explains that this decline reflects a strategic shift in its enforcement approach. Instead of only removing individual advertisements, the company now focuses on banning the underlying bad accounts entirely, which prevents thousands of malicious ads from ever entering the network.
To further improve compliance, Google plans to launch a new Ad Policy Manager in April to guide advertisers before they submit content. This proactive tool aims to stop policy violations before they occur, protecting the massive ad revenue stream that funds popular free services like YouTube, Android, and Gmail.