Last week, Google released its 2024 Ads Safety Report. According to Google, the key takeaway from this year's report is "how AI is bolstering not only enforcement against bad ads, but also our ability to prevent fraudsters from entering our ecosystem."
Here are some of the highlights from the report.
Advertiser policy enforcement
Google said that, in 2024, it removed more than 5.1 billion advertisements. The largest categories that were removed were ads that abused the ad network, ads that had trademark issues, and personalized ads. Google explained, "Our policies are designed to support a safe and positive experience for our users, which is why we prohibit content that we believe to be harmful to users and the overall advertising ecosystem."
Google also highlighted that it co-founded the Global Signal Exchange with the Global Anti-Scam Alliance, to enhance cross-industry information sharing about scams.
In addition, the report also noted an industry-wide trend that had emerged, which was the rise of public figure impersonation ads – "bad actors using AI-generated imagery or audio to imply an affiliation with a celebrity to promote a scam." In response, among other things, Google updated its Misrepresentation policy in March 2024, to prohibit "enticing users to part with money or information by impersonating or falsely implying affiliation with or endorsement by a public figure, brand, or organization." In 2024, Google permanently suspended more than 700,000 advertising accounts that violated this policy.
Restricted ads
Google also reported that due to its restricted ads policies – that cover content that is legally or culturally sensitive – the platform restricted more than 9 billion ads in 2024. This included ads in a variety of categories, including financial services, gambling, healthcare, and alcohol.
In addition, with more than half of the world's population having elections in 2024, Google also stepped up its work to support election integrity. Google explained, "we continued to expand our identity verification and transparency requirements for election advertisers to new countries." Google also reported that it was the first company to launch disclosure requirements for AI-generated content in election ads. Google said that it removed more than 10 million election ads from unverified accounts and also "continued to enforce our policies against demonstrably false election claims around the world."
Publisher enforcement
Noting that it supports the open web by helping publishers to monetize their content, Google said that publisher content is subject to various content policies. As a result, Google took action against 1.3 billion publisher pages in 2024. Some of the main issues that caused Google to take action were sexual content, dangerous or derogatory content, malicious or unwanted software, shocking content, weapons promotion and sales, online gambling, tobacco, alcohol, intellectual property abuse, and sexually explicit content.
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