Google removed 3.4 billion ads in 2021, restricted over 5.7 billion: Report

Google has shared its annual Ads Safety Report for 2021 and revealed the number of ads it blocked last year, along with some other details. The company added that while it makes the decisions about ads and monetised content across its platforms, user safety is top of the list.

“In fact, thousands of Googlers work around the clock to prevent malicious use of our advertising services and help make them safer for people, businesses and publishers. We do this important work because an ad-supported internet means everyone can access essential information,” Google added.

The company mentioned in its report that they have introduced a “multi-strike system” for repeated policy violations across its platforms and has also added/updated more than 30 policies for advertisers and publishers including a “policy prohibiting claims that promote climate change denial and certification for US-based health insurance providers to only allow ads from government exchanges, first-party providers and licensed third-party brokers”.

Importantly, Google said that in 2021 it has -

- Removed over 3.4 billion ads

- Restricted over 5.7 billion ads

- Suspended over 5.6 million advertiser accounts

- Blocked or restricted ads from serving on 1.7 billion publisher pages

- Taken broader site-level enforcement action on 63,000 publisher sites, approximately

Additionally, Google mentioned in the report that they responded to the Ukraine-Russia war by qualifying it as a “sensitive event” to prohibit ads from profiting or exploiting the situation. “This is in addition to our longstanding policies prohibiting content that incites violence or denies the occurrence of tragic events to run as ads or monetise using our services,” Google said.

“We’ve also taken several other steps to pause the majority of our commercial activities in Russia across our products — including pausing ads from showing in Russia and ads from Russian-based advertisers, and pausing monetization of Russian state-funded media across our platforms,” Google added.

The company said that so far it has blocked over 8 million ads related to the Ukraine-Russia war under its sensitive event policy and separately removed ads from “more than 60 state-funded media sites” across its platforms.

Also Read: Google onboards former NITI Aayog official Archana Gulati as India policy head

Also Read: Google is shutting YouTube Go app for good