Google has unveiled its 2023 Ads Safety Report, for sharing the progress made by the company in enforcing its advertiser and publisher policies to ensure accountability for ‘maintaining a healthy ad-supported internet.’ “The key trend in 2023 was the impact of generative AI. This new technology introduced significant and exciting changes to the digital advertising industry, from performance optimization to image editing. Of course, generative AI also presents new challenges. We take these challenges seriously and will outline the work we are doing to address them head-on. Just as importantly, generative AI presents a unique opportunity to improve our enforcement efforts significantly. Our teams are embracing this transformative technology, specifically Large Language Models (LLMs), so that we can better keep people safe online,” the report quoted.
According to the report, Google’s safety teams have made use of machine learning (ML) powered by AI to enforce their policies at scale. From what it’s understood, LLMs have the potential to increasingly scrutinise content at a high volume, along with recording important nuances within that content. In the report, Google has stated that the advanced reasoning applications have resulted in large-scale and more precise enforcement decisions on some of its more complex policies. “To be sure, traditional machine learning models are trained to detect these policy violations. Yet, the fast-paced and ever-changing nature of financial trends make it, at times, harder to differentiate between legitimate and fake services and quickly scale our automated enforcement systems to combat scams. LLMs are more capable of quickly recognizing new trends in financial services, identifying the patterns of bad actors who are abusing those trends and distinguishing a legitimate business from a get-rich-quick scam. This has helped our teams become even more nimble in confronting emerging threats of all kinds,” the report mentioned. Furthermore, Google specified that it has started to use its Gemini AI model for bringing sophisticated reasoning capabilities into its ads safety and enforcement efforts, along with other LLMs.
Official data from the report suggests that in 2023, scams and frauds comprising all online platforms clocked an increase, on account of bad actors improvising their methods to manipulate digital advertising in order to scam people and legitimate businesses alike. In November, Google unveiled its Limited Ads Servicing Policy, for safeguarding users against less familiar advertisers, along with implementing ‘a “get-to-know-you” period for advertisers who don’t yet have an established track record of good behavior, during which impressions for their ads might have been limited in certain circumstances.’ “Toward the end of 2023 and into 2024, we faced a targeted campaign of ads featuring the likeness of public figures to scam users, often through the use of deepfakes. When we detected this threat, we created a dedicated team to respond immediately. We pinpointed patterns in the bad actors’ behavior, trained our automated enforcement models to detect similar ads and began removing them at scale. We also updated our misrepresentation policy to better enable us to rapidly suspend the accounts of bad actors,” the report added. Overall, Google blocked or removed 206.5 million advertisements for violating its misrepresentation policy, which included scam tactics and 273.4 million advertisements for violating its financial services policy and also removal of one billion advertisements “We’ll continue to dedicate extensive resources, making significant investments in detection technology and partnering with organizations like the Global Anti-Scam Alliance and Stop Scams UK to facilitate information sharing and protect consumers worldwide,” the report stated.
In terms of investing in election integrity, Google introduced its long-standing identity verification and transparency requisites for election advertisers, along with restrictions on how these advertisers can channel their election ads. “All election ads must also include a “paid for by” disclosure and are compiled in our publicly available transparency report. In 2023, we verified more than 5,000 new election advertisers and removed more than 7.3M election ads that came from advertisers who did not complete verification. Last year, we were the first tech company to launch a new disclosure requirement for election ads containing synthetic content. As more advertisers leverage the power and opportunity of AI, we want to make sure we continue to provide people with the greater transparency and the information they need to make informed decisions,” the report highlighted.
In the report, Google has upheld AI’s importance for improving its enforcement on all fronts. “In 2023, we blocked or removed over 5.5 billion ads, slightly up from the prior year, and 12.7 million advertiser accounts, nearly double from the previous year. Similarly, we work to protect advertisers and people by removing our ads from publisher pages and sites that violate our policies, such as sexually explicit content or dangerous products. In 2023, we blocked or restricted ads from serving on more than 2.1 billion publisher pages, up slightly from 2022. We are also getting better at tackling pervasive or egregious violations. We took broader site-level enforcement action on more than 395,000 publisher sites, up markedly from 2022,” the report added. Moreover, Google stated that in last year, over 90% of its publisher page level enforcement started using machine learning models, including its latest LLMs.
“In 2023, for example, we launched the Ads Transparency Center, a searchable hub of all ads from verified advertisers, which helps people quickly and easily learn more about the ads they see on Search, YouTube and Display. We also updated our suitability controls to make it simpler and quicker for advertisers to exclude topics that they wish to avoid across YouTube and Display inventory. Overall, we made 31 updates to our Ads and Publisher policies. Though we don’t yet know what the rest of 2024 has in store for us, we are confident that our investments in policy, detection and enforcement will prepare us for any challenges ahead,” the report concluded.
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