THE GUARDIAN
•Adult contents, trademarks, gambling top lists
• Kenyans lead Nigerians, S’Africans on Internet browsing in the last five years
While it hopes to release the 2022 data soon, Google has disclosed that in 2021, it removed over 3.4 billion ads, restricted over 5.7 billion and suspended over 5.6 million advertiser accounts.
Google said it also blocked or restricted ads from serving on 1.7 billion publisher pages and took broader site-level enforcement action on approximately 63,000 publisher sites in Nigeria and other parts of the world.
These were part of the information released yesterday in Lagos, at the Google Ads Privacy Immersion workshop. The search platform noted that when it makes decisions about ads and other monetised content on the platforms, user safety is at the very top of the list.
It stressed that thousands of Googlers work around the clock to prevent malicious use of the firm’s advertising network and make it safer for people, businesses and publishers.
Google said this important work is done because an ad-supported Internet allows everyone to access essential information and diverse content, at no cost, adding that as the digital world evolves, “our policy development and enforcement strategies evolve with it, helping to prevent abuse while allowing businesses to reach new customers and grow.”
Accordingly, the tech giant said 652.1 million ads found as abuse on the network were removed; adult content 286.8 million; trademarks 136.9 million; inappropriate content 125.6 million; gambling and games 75.1 million; healthcare and medicines 60 million.
Others are financial services 58.9 million; copyrights 44.2 million; misrepresentation 38.1 million; legal requirements 32.6 million; dangerous products and services 20.6 million; alcohol 9.4 million; enabling dishonest behavior 7.9 million; personalised ads 2.2 million and counterfeit goods one million.
