California, United States | By Michael Wandati | Last year, Google, the tech giant, witnessed a surge in the blocking of advertisements on its platforms, reaching a record-breaking 5.5 billion.
This notable increase reflects enhanced vigilance and underscores the escalating misuse of online advertising worldwide.
According to Google’s Ads Safety Report released recently, the volume of blocked ads and advertiser accounts nearly doubled compared to the previous year, reaching an unprecedented level.
This translates to an average daily blockage of 15 million ads and approximately 627,000 ‘bad’ ads per hour, indicative of a growing trend of advertisers resorting to unethical practices.
Simultaneously, Google suspended over 12.7 million advertiser accounts, effectively preventing them from posting further ads across Google’s diverse platforms, including YouTube, the eponymous search engine, and Gmail.
While Google attributes this heightened vigilance to the implementation of more advanced Artificial Intelligence (AI) models for ad monitoring, the report also highlights a surge in the number of ‘inappropriate’ ads encountered last year.
“This new AI technology introduced significant and exciting changes and challenges to the digital advertising industry and presents a unique opportunity to improve our enforcement efforts significantly,” says the report.
Out of the ads that were blocked, 1.04 billion were removed due to “abusing the ad network,” indicating that they included content leading users to malicious software, compromised websites, or unwanted software.
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Such promotional materials are notorious for facilitating cybercriminal activities such as hacking or surveillance, reflecting the increasing prevalence of cybercrime globally in the past year.
In a previous report, Google disclosed a notable increase in commercial surveillance vendors exploiting security vulnerabilities to unlawfully spy on users, particularly targeting journalists, activists, and politicians.
Another significant reason for ad blocking last year was the unauthorized use of trademarked or copyrighted content, resulting in the blocking of 548 million ads. Additionally, Google restricted approximately 6.9 billion ads last year.
Restricted ads are permitted to run but under limited conditions due to potentially containing culturally or legally sensitive content.
