Google Makes New Years Resolution To Crack Down On Bad Ads

ADS INTEGRITY BUSTING BAD ADVERTISING PRACTICES IN 2013 Online advertising helps fund the services we all enjoy, keeps web content free, and helps businesses grow. However, bad ads and bad ad-funded content can ruin our experiences online and damage our trust in the web as a whole. In 2013, we continued to fight the online advertising ecosystem's bad actors to protect people and shield them from these bad practices. Following up on our 2012 report, below is an overview of our work to fight bad ads and bad ad-funded content last year. MAINTAINING A HEALTHY ADVERTISING ECOSYSTEM SCAM.COM POLICIES STOPPING BAD ADS AND CONTENT ZERO TOLERANCE We're constantly reviewing and updating our advertising policies to reflect current online practices and emerging threats. We find and remove bad ads We do not tolerate ads or content and content in our network with a combination of automated systems and human expert review. that violates our policies. When we find them, we'll take the appropriate actions - including removals and blacklists - as quickly as we can. OVERVIEW BAD ADS BAD CONTENT LIST Disabled more than 350,000,000 bad ads Blacklisted more than 200,000 publisher pages from serving ads Banned more than 270,000 bad advertisers Removed more than 250,000 ad-funded publishers' accounts for various policy violations Already well below 1%, the proportion of ads removed outside of our initial review Disapproved more than 3,000,000 applications to join our network processes declined by 50% compared to 2012 Disabled bad ads and content coming from more than 150 countries and territories 2013 TRENDS Banned more than 14,000 advertisers for trying to sell counterfeit goods as attempts on AdWords decreased by 82% compared to 2012 Disabled more than 2,000,000 ads for illegal online pharmacies Stopped ad-serving on tens of thousands of sites and disabled more than 5,000 AdSense accounts for violations of our copyright policy - an increase of more than 25% compared to 2012 "HELP Disabled ad-serving for more than 1,800 sites and over 4,000 AdWords accounts linked to third-party remote tech support scams Disabled ads from more than 400,000 sites hiding malware Disabled ads for more than 10,000 sites promoting get-rich-quick schemes SCAM