Google launches ads transparency center

Google on Wednesday released its Ads Safety Report, an annual exercise in which it reviews the previous year’s numbers in terms of creating a safe ad ecosystem for all parties, whether advertisers, publishers or everyday users.

Alejandro Borgia, Director, Product Management, Ads Safety, Google, preceded the release of the report and 2022’s numbers, with a session on the company’s ads policies and enforcement. He also announced the launch of a new transparency tool, the Ads Transparency Center, a searchable repository of verified advertisers across all Google platforms, including Search, Display, and YouTube, which lets people search for a particular advertiser and view the advertiser page.

In 2022, Google added or updated 29 policies for advertisers and publishers. This included expanding financial services verification programs in 11 new countries (including India in August of last year), expanding protections for teens and strengthening elections ads policies.

The numbers themselves reveal why such policy updates are required.

In 2022, the world’s most visited website removed over 5.2 billion ads, restricted over 4.3 billion ads and suspended over 6.7 million advertiser accounts. This represents an increase of 2 billion more ads removed in 2022 from the previous year. Google also blocked or restricted ads from serving on over 1.5 billion publisher pages and took broader site-level enforcement action on over 143,000 publisher sites.

“To enforce our policies at this scale, we rely on a combination of human reviews and automated systems powered by artificial intelligence and machine learning. This helps sort through content and better detect violations across the globe,” said Borgia.

In October of last year, Google launched My AdCenter which helps people control the kinds of ads they see across Google on Search, YouTube and Discover. It also allows them to limit ads from sensitive categories and learn more about the information used to personalize their ad experience.

“In the first three months after launch, we’ve seen more than 70 million visits to My AdCenter globally, with people adjusting their ad preferences on more than 20% of those visits. We’ve also invested significantly in giving helpful information to users about our advertisers,” mentioned Borgia.

Consumers now can specifically flag ads, using a feature that's within the ad. Borgia said it’s also worth noting their enforcement touches have played a pivotal role in the policy development process. “The enforcement trends that we've observed help us to see what are the new policies that we might need to launch or what policies might need to be updated.”

Then there is the issue of online financial scams and phishing, even as fraudulent activity continues to rise.

“While not unique to digital advertising, these scams can cause real financial harm and we are committed to combating them on our platforms. In 2022 we expanded our financial services certification program which requires advertisers to demonstrate that they are authorized by their local regulator to promote their products and services. This measure adds a new layer of security against fraudsters and further safeguards people from financial scams,” he said.

Speaking directly to exchange4media on the hot-button topic of AI, especially in light of Google having just rolled out Bard, its chatbot competitor to the much vaunted, Microsoft-backed ChatGPT, Borgia said that it's still early days for Bard, and it's really too early to speculate what form chatbots in general are going to take, “much less the ad formats or the monetization models that will support such chatbots.”

“I will say that AI has been foundational to our ads business and for the last decade, and will continue to bring cutting-edge advances to our products, help businesses and users. When it comes to our ads, policies and enforcement, we've long used a combination of human reviewers and automated systems. Many of those automated systems are relying on AI and technology, but also trained by humans, and these helped us to better detect policy-violating content and remove it at scale,” he said.

Borgia concluded, “While I don't have specific comments on chatbots or Bard, I wanted to share that context because we do have extensive investments in artificial intelligence in general, and specifically for our business.”