Google has released its annual Ads Safety Report to share the progress made in enforcing advertiser and publisher policies and to hold itself accountable in its work of maintaining a healthy ad-supported internet.
The key trend in 2023 was the impact of generative AI. This new technology introduced changes to the digital advertising industry, from performance optimization to image editing. However, generative AI also presents new challenges. Google’s teams are embracing this technology, specifically Large Language Models (LLMs), to better keep people safe online.
Gen AI bolsters enforcement
Google’s safety teams have long used machine learning powered by AI to enforce its policies at scale. It’s how, for years, it has been able to detect and block billions of bad ads before a person ever sees them. But, while still highly sophisticated, these machine learning models have historically needed to be trained extensively — they often rely on hundreds of thousands, if not millions of examples of violative content.
LLMs, on the other hand, are able to rapidly review and interpret content at a high volume, while also capturing important nuances within that content. These advanced reasoning capabilities have already resulted in larger-scale and more precise enforcement decisions on some of our more complex policies.
Take, for example, Google’s policy against Unreliable Financial Claims which includes ads promoting get-rich-quick schemes. The bad actors behind these types of ads have grown more sophisticated. They adjust their tactics and tailor ads around new financial services or products, such as investment advice or digital currencies, to scam users.
To be sure, traditional machine learning models are trained to detect these policy violations. Yet, the fast-paced and ever-changing nature of financial trends make it, at times, harder to differentiate between legitimate and fake services and quickly scale our automated enforcement systems to combat scams.
LLMs are more capable of quickly recognizing new trends in financial services, identifying the patterns of bad actors who are abusing those trends and distinguishing a legitimate business from a get-rich-quick scam. This has helped Google teams become even more nimble in confronting emerging threats of all kinds.
Preventing fraud and scams
In 2023, scams and fraud across all online platforms were on the rise. Bad actors are constantly evolving their tactics to manipulate digital advertising in order to scam people and legitimate businesses alike. To counter these ever-shifting threats, Google has launched our Limited Ads Serving policy, which is designed to protect users by limiting the reach of advertisers with whom we are less familiar.
Under this policy, Google implemented a “get-to-know-you” period for advertisers who don’t yet have an established track record of good behavior, during which impressions for their ads might be limited in certain circumstances—for example, when there is an unclear relationship between the advertiser and a
brand they are referencing. Ultimately, Limited Ads Serving, which is still in its early stages, will help ensure well-intentioned advertisers are able to build up trust with users, while limiting the reach of bad actors and reducing the risk of scams and misleading ads.
Toward the end of 2023 and into 2024, we faced a targeted campaign of ads featuring the likeness of public figures to scam users, often through the use of deepfakes. When Google detected this threat, Google created a dedicated team to respond immediately. Google trained our automated enforcement models to detect similar ads and began removing them at scale. We also updated our misrepresentation policy to better enable itself to rapidly suspend the accounts of bad actors.
Overall, Google blocked or removed 206.5 million advertisements for violating our misrepresentation policy, which includes many scam tactics and 273.4 million advertisements for violating our financial services policy. Google also blocked or removed over 1 billion advertisements for violating our policy against abusing the ad network, which includes promoting malware.
The fight against scam ads is an ongoing effort, as we see bad actors operating with more sophistication, at a greater scale, using new tactics such as deepfakes to deceive people. We’ll continue to dedicate extensive resources, making significant investments in detection technology and partnering with
organizations like the Global Anti-Scam Alliance and Stop Scams UK to facilitate information sharing and protect consumers worldwide.
Investing in election integrity
Political ads are an important part of democratic elections. Candidates and parties use ads to raise awareness, share information and engage potential voters. In a year with several major elections around the world, we want to make sure voters continue to trust the election ads they may see on our platforms. Google has long-standing identity verification and transparency requirements for election advertisers, as well as restrictions on how these advertisers can target their election ads.
All election ads must also include a “paid for by” disclosure and are compiled in our publicly available transparency report. In 2023, Goolge verified more than 5,000 new election advertisers and removed more than 7.3M election ads that came from advertisers who did not complete verification.
In 2023, Google blocked or removed over 5.5 billion ads, slightly up from the prior year, and 12.7 million advertiser accounts, nearly double from the previous year. Similarly, Google removes ads from publisher pages and sites that violate our policies, such as sexually explicit content or dangerous products. In 2023, we blocked or restricted ads from serving on more than 2.1 billion publisher pages, up slightly from 2022.
Last year more than 90 percent of publisher page level enforcement started with the use of machine learning models, including Google’s latest LLMs. Any
advertiser or publisher can still appeal an enforcement action if they think we got it wrong. Our teams will
review it and, in the cases where we find errors, use it to improve our systems.
When it comes to ads safety, a lot can change over the course of a year: the introduction of new technology such as generative AI to novel abuse trends and global conflicts. And the digital advertising space has to be nimble and ready to react. Google is developing new policies, strengthening its enforcement systems, deepening cross-industry collaboration and offering more control to people, publishers and advertisers.
In 2023 Google launched the Ads Transparency Center, a searchable hub of all ads from verified advertisers, which helps people quickly and easily learn more about the ads they see on Search, YouTube and Display. Google also updated our suitability controls to make it simpler and quicker for
advertisers to exclude topics that they wish to avoid across YouTube and Display inventory. Overall, Google made 31 updates to our Ads and Publisher policies.