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Except Google employees do manually review ads. Ads that might break the guidelines, such as pharmacy ads, are flagged by the system when they are submitted. Fl
by throwaway4587 15y ago
Except Google employees do manually review ads. Ads that might break the guidelines, such as pharmacy ads, are flagged by the system when they are submitted. Flagged ads are then reviewed manually to see if they comply with policy.
- sbov 15y agoWhich are (were?) probably flagged... through an imperfect heuristic?
- throwaway4587 15y agoCertainly ... and the condemning / damaging thing is the scale of the imperfection. But it's also worth pointing out that many of Google's AdWords policies have long been written to be at the edge of a nexus of the law and public pressure of a market. Pornography, for example. Or "drugs and drug paraphernalia", where bongs and water pipes are prohibited, but vaporisers are allowed if they are advertised as "an aromatherapy device".[1] Which is to say: the pharmacy policy, like others, was likely constructed by Google to get away with as much as possible without damaging the brand or the bottom line. And it hasn't worked. [1] http://adwords.google.com/support/aw/bin/static.py?hl=en-GB&topic=1626336&guide=1316546&page=guide.cs&answer=176024 http://adwords.google.com/support/aw/bin/static.py?hl=en-GB&...
- napierzaza 15y agoSo 500 million dollars worth of ads slipped through? I think you're right, they probably manually went through the ads and approved these sketchy online pharmacies. Does it make Google more or less complicit? The fact is that they don't really have much of a defence when they made 500 million dollars on it. If it was 50$ I think we could all agree some things slip by.
- throwaway4587 15y agoAgreed ... I wasn't suggesting that Google was not at fault, just pointing out that the system for approving ads is not completely automated.