Google is rolling out new tools that will allow users to learn more about the ads and advertisers they see across the company’s platforms.
The Ads Transparency Center allows users to search for ads an advertiser has run, where and when they have run and which formats they ran in. This covers all Google platforms, including Search, YouTube and the company’s display network. Users can also like or block an ad, as well as report it for violating Google ad policies.
The ad centre launches today and will roll out to all users over the coming weeks.
The Ads Transparency Center builds on other recent efforts the company has provided users to learn more about ads and the companies behind them, as well as giving them more control over what ads they see. Last year, the company launched My Ad Center, a centralized hub that lets users manage which data can and cannot be used to target ads to them, as well as remove ads for certain subjects or brands.
The new transparency tools are accessible through a centralized, searchable hub, or through the My Ad Center controls accessible through individual ads.
The Ads Transparency Center was revealed alongside the 2022 edition of Google’s Ad Safety Report, which detailed how it is protecting users from things like fraud and scams, prioritizing child safety and combating harmful content and misinformation.
Last year, Google blocked or removed more than 5.2 billion ads for violating its policies – adding up to more than 9,000 ads each minute. Over 4.3 million ads were restricted, and more than 6.7 advertisers accounts were suspended. More than two billion more ads were removed in 2022 than in the previous year.
Publishers, for their part, did not escape policy enforcement action. Ads were blocked or restricted from serving on over 1.5 billion publisher pages, with broader action taken on over 143,000 publisher sites. These actions were made based on human reviews and systems powered by AI and machine learning. The most enforced areas against publishers were pages with sexual content, deemed dangerous or derogatory, promoting weapons and their sales, and pages with shocking content.
To fight fraud and scams, Google added another layer of security by expanding its financial services certification program, which requires advertisers to prove they had approval to promote their products and services. The program was launched in 11 countries. As a result, 142 million ads were blocked or removed for violating Google’s misrepresentation policy, in addition to 198 million ads that violated the financial services policy.
Google has also developed a new policy against climate change denial. Last year, over 300,000 ads were blocked from running on publisher pages violating these policies. More than 24 million policy-violating ads were blocked from being served. In addition, over 51.2 million ads were blocked or removed for inappropriate content including hate speech, violence, and harmful health claims and 20.6 million ads for dangerous products or services such as weapons and explosives.
The war in Ukraine prompted Google to prohibit ads that exploit, dismiss or condone the war. It paused the majority of its commercial activities in Russia and paused monetization of Russian state-funded media. Enforcement of these policies resulted in the blocking of more than 17 million ads related to the war and removal of ads from more than 275 state-funded media sites.
In 2021, Google expanded protections already in place for young children to all users under the age of 18 globally. This includes blocking ad targeting based on age, gender or interests, and prevents age-sensitive ad categories from being served to teens. Google now also prohibits ads promoting dating apps, contests and sweepstakes, as well as weight loss products to be served to people under 18.
