It was a busy year for Google in 2017, as the company doubled down on its crackdown of bad advertisements and practices.
Cleaning House
Over 3.2 billion malicious ads were removed by the digital behemoth last year, nearly doubling the amount from 2016 (1.7 billion) and equating to roughly 100 ads removed every second. A variety of “bad” ad types were purged, including 79 million ads that drove users to websites that contained malware (400,000 of these websites were removed), 66 million “trick-to-click” ads (ads that appear as fake system warnings), and 48 million ads that enticed users to install unwanted software.
Ads and websites weren’t the only part of Google’s cleanup. 320,000 publishers and 700,000 mobile apps were deemed to be violation of policies and therefore either removed from the network or blacklisted. Additionally, 7,000 AdWords accounts were also suspended for “tabloid-cloaking” violations (ads that look like news headlines but are actually selling “something other than news”), which was an increase of more than 5000 accounts since 2016.
Countering Deceit with New Tech
Google has implemented technology to better defend publishers and advertisers operating legitimately by removing ads from websites that have been flagged to be in violation of policies. This caused 2 million pages to be removed each month in 2017. Among the string of new tech includes their recent new ad-blocker, which is designed to block ads that are deemed to be too intrusive or disruptive to user-experience in partnership with the Coalition for Better Ads.
Expanding Policy
Last year, Google added 28 new advertising policies and 20 new publisher policies in their ongoing campaign to combat derogatory content, malicious or misleading ads and other forms of discrimination.
This year the company will take steps to focus more on new financial commodities such as binary options, cryptocurrencies, foreign exchange markets and contracts for difference (among others).
For a complete breakdown of Google’s new policies and their results from last year’s efforts, you can read their official blog article here.
Taking a Safe Approach
As Google continues to ramp up its efforts to clean up the web of unsafe content, affiliates and advertisers need to be steadfast in taking the same approach. If you haven’t read it in awhile, now is a great time to refresh yourself on Google’s ad policies to ensure your campaigns remain as healthy and profitable as possible. With the crackdown of so many dirty ads and websites, this really is a great opportunity for affiliates who are keeping themselves to-date on all the best practices.