The depth and severity of fraudulent digital advertising is growing by the nanosecond, literally! Google removed 100 bad ads per second in 2017!
Scott Spencer, Google’s director of sustainable ads, wrote in a blog post. “We took down more than 3.2 billion ads that violated our advertising policies,” he wrote — up from 1.7 billion in 2016.
The company blocked 79 million ads in its network for attempting to send people to malware-infested sites, and removed 400,000 of these types of sites in the past year.
Google also removed 66 million of what it calls “trick-to-click” ads, as well as 48 million ads that attempted to get users to install unwanted software.
Google removed 320,000 publishers from its ad network for violating the company’s publisher policies. It also blacklisted nearly 90,000 websites and 700,000 mobile apps.
In 2017, Google removed 2 million pages for policy violations each month. After expanding its policy against dangerous and derogatory content in April to cover additional forms of discrimination and intolerance.
Your little AdWords budget trying to drive traffic to your website is meaningless in this tsunami of bad actors and fraudulent schemes designed for one purpose and one purpose only, to rip people off.
Google is working to eliminate the problem but their efforts are met with an even stronger effort by bad actors to defraud Internet users. It is like the Little Dutch Boy trying to plug holes in the dyke. They’re playing Wa-Ka-Mole with these Internet shysters. They are out to get a piece of the $12.6 billion Google paid out to the AdSense network in 2017.
When it comes to digital advertising to drive traffic to your website, Radio is your best bet.
Based on an analysis of over 2,100 radio ads across 6 different categories of business including retail, insurance, automotive, wireless communication, automotive aftermarket and e-commerce:
- Radio generated an average 29% lift in Google search activity. In fact, for one of the retailers studied, their lift was an extraordinary 390%.
- Search as a result of radio advertising is greater on weekdays versus weekends.
- Radio-driven search is higher during midday hours.
- Quality of radio creative has a direct impact on increased search behavior. In fact, the ads in the top two performing quintiles out-performed the average by more than 2X and 7X.
Radio has long been known as the medium that drives foot traffic, the medium that performs best at the bottom of the consumer decision funnel (closest to the point of purchase) and the medium that is best used for promotions, contests and sales. This study proves that radio is also a medium that can stimulate interest, build awareness for brands and drive the behavior that you want to influence, visit your website.
Radio is a fraud-free, family friendly arena where the listeners trust their favorite Radio stations. The Radio audience size is larger than at any time in history. The listeners feel a personal connection with their favorite Radio station. They trust their favorite Radio station to keep them up-to-date. They listen to Radio when they are having fun. They listen when they need a lift. They feel like the commercials on their favorite Radio station are more relevant to them than commercials they see or hear elsewhere. Documented return on investment is overwhelmingly the best of any medium.
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