Google recently reported the removal of 1.7 billion “bad ads” in 2016. These were made up primarily of payday loan ads, fake news ads, and fake system errors. The number is more than double of its 2015 report which showed 780 million ads pulled.
These come in the wake of Google’s efforts to ramp up its efforts to against advertisements that are detrimental to their users. The specific numbers included five million payday loan ads and 112 million false “system error” dopplegangers which loaded malware when clicked.
The “fake news” and “self-clicking” items only numbered in the thousands, but the numbers of clicks they received soared up into the millions. These were only deceptive marketing schemes that presented false information to attract viewers to a page that sold some kind of merchandise. For instance, one such ploy stated – or, at least insinuated – a famous actor had passed away, but it linked to an ad for male enhancement pills. Google banned more than 13,000 such accounts last year.
Google overseers reported taking down about 22 similarly deceptive ads – called “tabloid cloakers” – in December of last year that had gleaned more than 20 million clicks in one week.
Google stated they have updated their “misrepresentative content policy” last year. More than 550 sites were under their scrutiny as suspected of using false content, such as pretending to represent a news agency. They found 340 violations since then and have banned 200 ad publishers from the network.
