Expanding our efforts to fight fraudulent financial ads in India
Combating financial fraud in advertising is a top priority. And we’re constantly developing new tools and policies that help better protect the people who use our products and our advertising partners from bad actors. Thousands of Googlers work around the clock to prevent malicious use of our advertising services and help make them safer for people, businesses and publishers. We do this important work because an ad-supported internet means everyone can access online services and information.
Today we’re updating our financial products and services policy to expand our verification program for financial services advertisers in India. This measure creates a new layer of protection against fraudsters and will help further safeguard our ads network from financial scams.
We first launched this program in the UK in September 2021, and since then, we have expanded the program to Australia, Singapore and Taiwan.
As part of the verification process, financial services advertisers in India (except Government entities) will need to demonstrate that they are authorized by a government approved regulator(s) in India or demonstrate that they are exempted. Advertisers will be able to apply for verification starting today by completing the process as described here, and the policy will go into effect on 17 October 2022. Advertisers that have not completed the new verification process by this date will no longer be allowed to promote financial services.
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. We’ve continued to invest in our policies, teams of experts and enforcement technology to stay ahead of potential threats.
While we understand that this policy update will impact a range of advertisers in the financial services space, our utmost priority is to keep users safe on our platforms — particularly in an area so disproportionately targeted by fraudsters.
Our teams continue to vigorously enforce these policies and combat scammers, using both machine learning and human reviewers to block bad ads. And in 2020, we launched our advertiser verification program that will require Google advertisers to verify and disclose information about their businesses, such as where they operate and what they’re selling or promoting. This transparency feature is now live in more than 180 countries and helps people learn more about the company and services behind a specific ad.
In 2021, we removed over 3.4 billion ads, restricted over 5.7 billion ads and suspended over 5.6 million advertiser accounts. We 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.
We remain committed to this effort and will continue to collaborate with industry and government organizations to lead on necessary changes that help fight evolving tactics from bad actors.
