Google’s Battle Against Bad Ads

Despite many years of being tight-lipped about the AdWords ad review processes, the company has recently begun to reveal more about the efforts it’s making to prevent bad ads from slipping through. The company has been criticized for years, and recently paid a record $500 million judgment to the U.S. Justice Department, for incidents in which illegal, counterfeit or otherwise malicious ads have been displayed by Google.

The company is in a difficult position in a couple of different ways. If it cracks down too hard and takes too long to review ads, or rejects good ads, Google gets grief from white-hat advertisers. When bad ads slip through, it’s accused of a conflict of interest — because it ostensibly profits when ads run, even if they’re bad.

And, yet, bad ads continue to slip through, and Google is still accused of not working hard enough to catch the bad guys.