We just read a great ClickZ article that examined what Google calls "bad ads" across their advertising platform.
According to their definition, "bad ads" are accounts or advertising creative that violates Google's terms of service & advertising policy across the web.
In the article, the following stats were uncovered:
- In 2010, Google cancelled nearly 248,000 accounts for terms of service & advertising policy violations
- In 2011, that number exploded to nearly 824,000 cancelled accounts
- In 2010, Google denied more than 56 million "bad ads", or ads that weren't compliant with it's advertising policies.
- That number jumped to 134 million ads denied in 2011
So why is this topic relevant?
Google has worked to improve its advertising platform and implemented new techniques to prevent so-called "bad ads" from running on its properties over the last few years.
The company has put policies in place that do not allow ads containing misleading claims, spam or malware.
Which leads us to the question ...
Do your media partners have steps in place to ensure that they are not running "bad ads"?
More importantly, what steps do they have in place to stop it?
A couple examples of the proactive steps that Google has taken are:
- Ads violating their policies will not be shown on Google or AdSense partner sites
- For repeat offenders, Google bans not only advertisements but advertisers master accounts (at the MCC level)
- Google uses a human rater system as one of its methods to check up on how the system is doing.
- These human raters review a large set of sites that are advertised on Google to get a relevant statistical reading on their advertising platform. By using human raters, Google can calibrate their automated systems and ensure that the advertising experience is continuing to improve over time.
So we ask again: what steps is your agency taking to avoid running "bad ads"?
