How Google Polices Malicious Ads
https://blog.google/topics/ads/how-we-fought-bad-ads-sites-and-scammers-2016/
Google’s AdSense is a service which allows publishers of web content to earn revenue by placing advertisements on their web pages. When you Google “Google AdSense”, the first page which appears is a link to Google’s AdSense page. Prominently displayed on that page is a link to “Sign Up Now”. Similarly, advertisers can sign up to post ads through Google using Google’s AdWords. Given that anyone can participate in the advertising marketplace, as an advertiser or a publisher of content with which ads are associated, how does Google police its advertising marketplace for misleading or malicious ads?
The article above is from The Keyword, a blog run by Google, and details some of the company’s efforts to crack down on malicious advertising in the years 2015 and 2016. According to the article, Google removed 1.7 billion advertisements for violations of Google’s advertising policies in 2016.
Some advertisements are removed because they are malicious, including ads which download harmful software when clicked. “Trick to click” advertisements, for example, disguise themselves as system warnings to trick web users into clicking on them. Google removed 112 million such advertisements in 2016.
Other advertisements are deemed malicious because they advertise an illegal product or a harmful service. Two categories of advertisements frequently removed for such violations are advertisements for illegal gambling operations and illegitimate advertisements for pharmaceutical products. Google has also moved to ban ads for payday loans, which the company states often result in “unaffordable payments and high default rates for users”. Other advertisements are removed because they are misleading or contain hyperbolic claims; a common example of such ads would be advertisements for weight loss remedies.
One new trend in malicious advertising observed by Google in 2016 was the phenomenon of “Tabloid Cloakers”, advertisements which disguise themselves as news headlines to attract clicks, but link users to websites promoting a product, rather than a news source.
In our class discussions of sponsored search, we considered the payoff to an advertiser to be the difference between the advertiser’s expected revenue and the price paid for the ad. We did not consider that, especially recently, there have been negative consequences to advertisers as a result of placing advertisements through services like Google’s. For example, some advertisers have recently had advertisements placed next to potentially offensive content and fake news.
This article is especially interesting because it is not about malicious publishers, but malicious advertisements. Our class discussion also did not consider the potential repercussions to publishers of web content should malicious advertisements such as those described above appear on their sites. I imagine I am not the only person who loses faith in the content of a website if that content appears next to inappropriate or absurd advertisements. It seems to me that there exists a tradeoff between the revenue gained the hosting advertisements, and the potential harm to credibility if malicious advertisements are shown to consumers on a publisher’s page.
Thus, another factor to be considered when choosing to participate in the advertising through Google as a publisher or an advertiser is how well the marketplace is regulated by Google. Google devotes significant resources to policing its advertising. However, as can be seen from recent trends, including publishers of fake news profiting from ads placed through services like Google’s, the system is not perfect.