Google Banned 1.7 Billion Ads In 2016

Google lately revealed it has killed about 1.7 billion ads in 2016 due to violations in advertising policies. In 2015 the number was half and in 2011 just 130 million were spiked. Some of the common things in these ads were fraudulent, malware-carrying or annoying ads.

The search giant’s director of product management for sustainable ads, Scott Spencer, said Google first expanded the kinds of ads that it won’t allow and later banned payday loan ads.

More to this, Google improved the technology to discover such ads and also disable unwanted ads faster.

Google has also tightened its policies to stop spread of fake news. Millions of publishers in its AdSense ad network were also banned who try to deceive people. More than 500 suspected sites were reviewed between November and December that misrepresented content.

In a blog post Google writes it has removed those ads that promoted illegal activities or products. In 2016 it disabled over 68 million bad ads for healthcare violations. In 2015 the figure was just 12.5 million.

Google added it had taken down last year over 17 million bad ads for illegal gambling violations.

The search engine further adds the company does not want people to feel misled by ads that the platform delivers. The misleading ads such as “Are you at risk for this rare, skin-eating disease” have been removed. Also, the ads that claim offering miracle cures to lose weight have been banned. About 80 million such bad ads were taken down last year.

In 2016 Google disabled over 23,000 self-clicking ads that saw a huge increase year over year. In 2015 only few thousand of such ads were kicked off.