Telecom
Google 2022 Ads Safety Report: How we Suspended 6.7 million ad accounts over Safety Issues
In a bid to ensure the safety of its users, Google has released its Ad Safety Report 2022 with detailed accounts of how the telecom giant is maintaining a secure and trustworthy online space for its users.
The report released by Alejandro Borgia, Director, Product Management, Ads Safety, revealed that Google eliminated 5.2 billion ads, restricted over 4.3 million ads and suspended more than 6.7 million advertiser accounts in 2022 alone.
According to the report: “We know that people and businesses put enormous trust in Google when they use our products. That’s why we have thousands of people working around the clock to create and enforce effective advertiser and publisher policies to prevent abuse while enabling publishers and businesses of all sizes to thrive. We do this important work because a healthy ad-supported internet means everyone can access quality information.
“As the digital world continues to evolve, Google makes ongoing investments in our policies and enforcement so people can have the safest possible experience online.
“In 2022, we added or updated 29 policies for advertisers and publishers. This included expanding our financial services verification program to 10 new countries, expanding protections for teens and strengthening our elections ads policies.
“These policies help protect people. In 2022, we 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. We 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 sot through content and better detect violations across the globe.
“You can read our full 2022 Ads Safety Repot for transparency into our enforcement data. Let’s take a moment to highlight a few of the key themes we tackled in 2022”.
Protecting Users from Fraud and Scams
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. To date, we’ve launched this program in 11 countries including the United Kingdom, Australia, and Singapore. Going forward, we intend to further expand this program.
Despite our continued efforts, bad actors increasingly operate at a greater scale and with more sophistication. They use a variety of tactics to evade detection. For example, at the end of 2022 and into the new year, we faced a targeted campaign of scammers creating thousands of accounts to spread malware by impersonating popular software brands.
When we identify these coordinated threats, we urgently assess the situation and take action. In this example, we quickly identified how scammers were spreading their malware and put additional restrictions to block their ability to harm consumers. Over a one-month period, we blocked and removed tens of thousands of malicious advertisements and took action against the accounts associated with the bad ads.
Overall, in 2022, we blocked or removed 142 million advertisements for violating our misrepresentation policy and 198 million advertisements for violating our financial services policy.
Blocking and Removing Harmful Content and Combating Misinformation
In recent years, we’ve developed extensive measures to tackle misinformation and unreliable claims in our advertising ecosystem. This includes our policies against harmful health claims and demonstrably false claims that could undermine trust and participation in elections. We’ve also developed an industry-leading policy against climate change denial. In 2022, we blocked ads from running on over 300,000 publisher pages that violated these policies and blocked over 24 million policy-violating ads from serving. In addition, we blocked and removed over 51.2 million ads 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.
Ahead of major elections around the world, we continued our efforts to provide voters with reliable information about the election ads they saw on our platforms. As part of that work, we expanded our verification and transparency program for election ads, verifying over 5,900 new advertising accounts in the U.S. and over 2,300 in Brazil. Election ads from these advertisers included disclosures that showed who paid for the ads and also appeared in our Political Advertising on Google Transparency Repot. We’ve also blocked over 2.6 million election ads that came from advertisers who had not completed our required verification process.
Responding to the War in Ukraine
Following the stat of the war in Ukraine, we acted quickly to prohibit ads that exploit, dismiss or condone the war. This is in addition to our longstanding policies prohibiting content that incites violence or denies the occurrence of tragic events to run as ads or monetize using our services.
We also paused the majority of our commercial activities in Russia across our products. We paused ads from showing in Russia along with ads from Russian-based advertisers and paused monetization of Russian state-funded media across our platforms.
Throughout 2022, we remained vigilant enforcing these policies and blocked more than 17 million ads related to the war in Ukraine under our sensitive event policy. Separately, we removed ads from more than 275 state-funded media sites across our platforms.
Prioritizing Child Safety
When it comes to designing products and creating policies, one of our top priorities is to ensure the safety of kids and teens around the world. That’s why we’ve long blocked ads targeting and personalization for young kids. We’ve also filtered mature ad categories such as sexually explicit content and ads for gambling, alcohol and pharmaceutical drugs. And, in 2021, we announced that we would expand these protections to all users under the age of
18 globally. This includes blocking ad targeting based on age, gender or interests and preventing additional age-sensitive ad categories from serving to teens. We began rolling out these changes in Europe and completed that process globally last year. We also now prohibit ads promoting dating apps, contests and sweepstakes, as well as weight loss products to people under 18.
Empowering Users with More Information and Control
In addition to our policies and enforcement, we’re committed to leading the industry in giving users more information about the ads they see and putting them in control of their ads experience.
In October, we launched My Ads Center 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 Ad Center 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. In 2020, we began verifying advertiser identity and today we verify them in more than 240 countries and regions. In 2021, we launched advertiser pages in the United States which shows basic information about a verified advertiser like where they are located, what type of business they provide and other advertisements they’ve recently run. In 2022, we expanded this program globally.
Today I’m pleased to announce we are launching a new transparency tool, the Ads Transparency Center, a searchable repository of verified advertisers across all of our platforms, including Search, Display, and YouTube, that lets people search for a particular advertiser and view the advertiser page.
Looking Ahead to 2023
Providing a safe and trustworthy ads experience for users is a critical contribution to Google’s mission to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful. As 2023 continues, we will stay diligent in our efforts to combat abuse across our platforms while helping advertisers and publishers grow their businesses.
IHS Nigeria, part of the IHS Holding Limited (“IHS Towers”) group, one of the largest independent owners, operators, and developers of shared communications infrastructure in the world by tower count has announced a strategic partnership with the National Commission for Museums and Monuments (NCMM) and the Federal Ministry of Art, Culture, and the Creative Economy (FMACCE) to support the digitization of Nigeria’s cultural heritage.
This collaboration aims to make Nigeria’s historical artifacts, artworks, and cultural monuments more accessible to the public through a digital museum.
The partnership between IHS Nigeria, NCMM, and FMACCE will leverage technologies to digitalize and display artifacts online, helping to preserve and showcase Nigeria’s cultural heritage. It marks a significant step towards modernizing the preservation and dissemination of Nigeria’s cultural assets, making them more accessible to a broader audience.
The digital museum is the first significant project under the Honorable Minister’s Digital Culture Initiative and is designed to provide a platform for the exploration and appreciation of Nigeria’s diverse cultural heritage. This partnership underscores IHS Nigeria’s commitment to sustainability and its role in helping foster cultural preservation and digital education.
Mohamad Darwish, CEO, IHS Nigeria, commented, “We are excited to partner with the National Council for Museums and Monuments and the Federal Ministry of Art, Culture and the Creative Economy on this groundbreaking initiative. As a company deeply rooted in Nigeria, we recognize the importance of preserving, protecting, and promoting our cultural heritage.
“This partnership also aligns with our commitment to sustainability, education, economic growth, and community development. We look forward to contributing to the preservation of Nigeria’s cultural legacy”.
Hannatu Musawa, Nigeria’s Minister of Art, Culture and the Creative Economy, commented, “We are delighted to partner with IHS Nigeria on this initiative which aligns with His Excellency President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s Renewed Hope Agenda, and our Ministry’s 8-point plan on fostering strategic partnerships.
“I am particularly pleased that this initiative, which is the first significant project under our Digital Culture Initiative, embodies our commitment to innovation, global partnerships, and the sustainable growth of our creative industries, positioning Nigeria as a leader on the global stage.”
Olugbile Holloway, Director General, National Commission for Museums and Monuments, commented, “We are grateful to IHS Nigeria for their support in this remarkable initiative.
“We believe that to keep ahead of current trends and appeal to a younger demographic, it is imperative that a digital experience of our rich cultural heritage is created and made available to the public.
“The digital museum will serve as an invaluable resource for researchers, students, and the general public, both in Nigeria and around the world, and will play a crucial role in the preservation of our national heritage.”
In a significant escalation of its antitrust battle against Google, the US Department of Justice (DOJ) on Wednesday, November 20, urged a federal judge to break up the tech giant by ordering the sale of its widely used Chrome browser.
The DOJ also called for an end to Google’s agreements to be the default search engine on smartphones and proposed measures to prevent it from leveraging its Android operating system to dominate the market.
The DOJ suggested that if these remedies fail, Google should be compelled to divest Android entirely. The proposals mark one of the most aggressive antitrust moves against a major tech company in decades, with regulators seeking to curtail Google’s alleged abuse of its market power.
Google’s president of global affairs, Kent Walker, criticized the filing, accusing the DOJ of pursuing a “radical interventionist agenda.” Walker warned that the proposed breakup would disrupt Google’s product ecosystem, harm innovation in artificial intelligence, and threaten America’s global technological leadership.
This case represents a historic shift in the US government’s approach to regulating tech companies, following decades of relative inaction since the failed attempt to break up Microsoft in the early 2000s.
Google is set to respond in a filing next month, with a hearing scheduled for April before Judge Amit Mehta. The judge’s August ruling declared Google a monopoly, setting the stage for this next phase of the legal battle. Any decision is likely to be appealed, potentially taking years to resolve and possibly reaching the US Supreme Court.
The case’s future could also hinge on political changes, as President-elect Donald Trump’s incoming administration may take a different approach to antitrust enforcement. Trump has previously criticized Google for alleged bias against conservatives but has also expressed skepticism about breaking up major tech companies.
The DOJ’s proposals come amid broader efforts to address the dominance of big tech, with five antitrust cases currently pending against Amazon, Meta, Apple, and Google. These cases, brought under the Biden administration, are expected to shape the regulatory landscape for years to come.
Dubai Racing Club (DRC) has named Zoho Corporation, a leading global technology company, as its exclusive technology partner for the next two years.
This partnership will focus on digitising DRC’s operations, with the aim of enhancing the club’s high-profile events and ensuring a seamless, world-class experience for visitors, participants, and staff.
The announcement was made during a signing ceremony at Meydan Racecourse, attended by His Excellency Ali Al Ali, CEO and Board Member of the Dubai Racing Club, and Prem Anand Velumani, Associate Director of Strategic Alliances, MEA at Zoho.
As the organiser of major events, including the prestigious Dubai World Cup, the DRC will leverage Zoho’s comprehensive suite of digital solutions through Zoho One, the operating system for businesses, to streamline key operations.
By implementing Zoho One, the club will enhance various aspects of its event management, from ticketing and sales to logistics and customer relationship management (CRM).
HE Al Ali commented on the partnership: “We are pleased to welcome Zoho as our official technology partner this season.
“Technology is a cornerstone of our long-term vision for the Dubai Racing Club and the continued development of the horse racing industry.
“Zoho brings a wealth of expertise, and we look forward to collaborating with their team to create tailored solutions for our clients. From sophisticated CRM systems and streamlined accreditation processes to innovative mobile applications designed to enhance the experience for horse owners and racegoers, we are focused on setting new benchmarks for excellence.
“This partnership brings us one step closer to establishing Meydan as one of the most technologically advanced racecourses globally.”
The DRC will leverage Zoho’s web and mobile applications to improve accessibility and communication across platforms.
Zoho CRM will play a pivotal role in managing ticketing and sales, offering a seamless and personalised experience for attendees.
Zoho’s apps will also support critical operational functions such as accreditation, simulcasting, parking and barricade management, and order management, all of which will be fully digitised to enhance accessibility and efficiency.
“We are thrilled to be the exclusive technology partner of the Dubai Racing Club, an iconic institution that plays a central role in global equestrian sports,” said Prem Anand Velumani, MEA at Zoho.
“This partnership presents an exciting opportunity to demonstrate how Zoho’s comprehensive suite of solutions can support DRC’s operations and its commitment to excellence.
“By utilising Zoho’s customisable tools, DRC will be able to digitise and optimise critical operations, driving greater collaboration, agility, and a seamless guest experience.
“We are proud to help position the DRC at the forefront of digital transformation in the regional and global equestrian sports industry.”
Zoho’s solutions will also streamline guest and VIP stand management, ensuring a smooth experience for high-profile visitors.
Zoho’s apps will assist with venue navigation, while an all-in-one analytics dashboard will provide the DRC’s internal team with real-time data to evaluate performance and track ROI across all operational areas.
This integrated approach will allow the DRC to optimise its event management processes and deliver an exceptional experience for participants, staff, and guests alike.
The two-year partnership will see the DRC fully harness Zoho’s suite of solutions to drive digital transformation across all aspects of its operations.
As the club continues to grow, Zoho’s innovative digital solutions will play a pivotal role in ensuring the optimisation and success of every operational facet—from event coordination to customer engagement.
Known for hosting some of the most prestigious equestrian events in the world, the DRC attracts audiences and participants from around the world.
The Dubai Racing Club’s next meeting at the Meydan Racecourse is scheduled for November 22, 2024.
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