Google blocked fewer ads in 2018 than the year before

Google blocked 2.3 billion ads from its ad network in 2018. That is almost a billion less than in 2017. However, the company says it blocked almost twice as many ad accounts in 2018 as in 2017.

Google turned off those 2.3 billion ads because they didn’t comply with the company’s policies. For example, 207,000 ads for resale cards were removed, as well as 531,000 ads for bail bondsmen and nearly 59 million ads for phishing purposes. New measures were introduced in 2018 for the first two types of advertising.

In 2017, Google removed 3.2 billion ads. One possible reason for the decrease in the number of blocked ads could be the increased commitment to blocking ad accounts. In 2018, Google took down nearly a million ‘bad’ advertisers. Google used ‘enhanced’ machine learning for this. In 2018, the company said it deleted almost twice as many accounts compared to 2017.

Google also discusses who pays for political ads. In America, the company checked more than 140,000 political advertisements before the elections. The company also released a report on the transparency of political advertisements surrounding the elections. It states, for example, which organization spent the most money on advertisements. Google previously announced that it would set up a similar system for the elections to the European Parliament.

To make sure advertisers are confident that their ads are in line with Google’s policies, the company is introducing a new tool, a policy manager. It should be released in April and should enable creators to see the limitations of certain advertising campaigns at a glance. Additional features need to be added later. Examples include tips to fix deleted ads, a history of the blocked ads that the creator has appealed, and an overview of the advertiser’s certifications.

The search company is also announcing that ad creators will be able to appeal more quickly against blocked ads from next spring. Developers must then indicate why they are appealing, for example because they have adjusted the advertising or do not agree with the blockade. Advertisers can follow the appeals procedure in the policy manager.

Finally, Google indicates that it may detect some policy violations during the creation of text ads. In those cases, the system flags those violations before publishing so that the creator can correct them before publishing. Google gives a text ad with multiple exclamation marks as an example. Ad creators can choose to ignore the warning and still publish it, but run the risk of it being removed after publishing.

This is what the policy manager will look like according to Google