The Strategist

Google banned hundreds of advertisers in 2016



01/26/2017 - 14:30



Google has published a report on the fight against incorrect or fraudulent advertising and false information. In the past year, the company has removed 1.7 billion advertisements that misled consumers by offering something illegal or spread false information. In addition, the Internet giant has blocked more than malevolent 200 Internet resources.



Carlos Luna
Carlos Luna
Google has published a detailed report on outcome of fight against spread of false advertising and false information in the Internet. In the last year, Google has tightened requirements for users of its AdSense advertising network. Moreover, the company banned advertising of a particular range of products, such as payday loans and all that turns into unreasonable costs and damage to consumers. According to the report, by the end of the year Google has removed 1.7 billion advertisements and publications that violated the company’s requirements. In November and December, the company checked about 550 resources that placed advertisements and information through AdSense, and imposed a permanent ban on more than 200 of them.

Google gives an example to illustrate how big is the figure of 1.7 billion poor quality promotional ads. "If you spend one second to close each of these ads, you would have taken more than 50 years trying to close them all", - the report says. Google’s technology allows to do it much faster, yet, on the other hand, there are more than 2 million resources – user of AdSense. For now, Google has managed to check only 550, so even such an advanced technology will need some time to finish the work.

According to the report, over the last six months the corporation has deleted more than 5 million ads of payday loans, 112 million advertisements which led to websites with malicious software (it is six times more than in 2015), more than 68 million ads of illegal medical products or goods (the figure was just 12.5 million in 2015), and 17 million ads of gambling. Furthermore, Google has removed almost 80 million other advertisements that misled consumers.

In the third fiscal quarter of 2016, revenues of Alphabet Holding (owns Google) increased by 20% to $ 22.5 billion, net profit grew by 27% to $ 5.06 billion. The corporation’s financial performance exceeded analysts' forecasts, reported Reuters with reference to statements of the holding.

Google has had doubts about shifting priorities from Internet advertising to mobile devices, but recent results have convinced Wall Street in success of the transition, said BGC Partners analyst Colin Gillis in a conversation with Reuters.

The holding’s revenue has been showing double-digit growth for the seventh consecutive quarter. Advertising is still main source of income for Alphabet, which accounts for 89% of the corporation’s revenue.

In the third quarter, Google’s revenues from advertising increased by 18.1% yoy and amounted to $ 19.8 billion. The highest growth was noted in Google cloud business, thanks to which income of other divisions of the company increased by 38.8%. 

source: fortune.com