What billions of bad ads taught us

Meet the teams and technology behind milestone moments in ads safety.

For 10 years, Google has publicly reported on efforts to prevent malicious use of our ads platforms in an annual Ads Safety Report.

A free and safe webspace is vital to the livelihoods and empowerment of people around the world.

Here’s a snapshot of how far we’ve come

2011: 130 million bad ads blocked or removed¹

2020: 3.1 billion bad ads blocked or removed²

But numbers don’t tell the whole story.

Progress in ads safety relies on the ability of our researchers and experts to set policies and make updates that continually improve the quality of the ads people see.

Experts and technology working together 24/7

Our cyclical method creates a feedback loop that improves our practices and policies.

For example, in 2014 our technical system flagged ordinary-looking accounts as suspicious.

Once our human experts dug deeper, they discovered a national vacation rental property scam.⁴

This finding was a significant landmark that informed future ads‑safety practices.

In 2016, our system disabled 6X more trick-to-click ads than in 2015.⁵

Over the years, scammers became more sophisticated in the tricks they used to get people to click the ads, so we assembled a specialized team to monitor these ever-changing tactics.

2015

780 million bad ad experiences eliminated⁶

2016

1.7 billion bad ad experiences eliminated⁷

2017

Over 3.2 billion bad ad experiences eliminated.⁸ That’s 100 bad ads per second.

2020

Temporarily paused over five million ads referencing the U.S. election while results were being certified⁹

2020

Over 99 million bad ads blocked from bad actors trying to capitalize on the pandemic¹⁰