[putaside]

The only time I have been bothered with these kind of ads, is when DoubleClick serves me those on my Android.

DoubleClick certainly is not the worst offender of this, but they are the biggest player. Is Google going to block/penalize the sites of their own customers? That would feel weird. Is Google going to block/penalize the sites of their competitors? That would also feel weird.

[tyingq]

That's borderline comical. Sell customers Adsense and/or DoubleClick, then scrape the customer's site and flag it when your ad platform serves up questionable content.

[dudus]

Usually the burden to approve an Ad is on the network that hosts/serve the Ad. Google does require approval for all Ads you want to serve to Google Search or Google Display Network, as well as Ads you want to sell through Doubleclick Ad Exchange.

Doubleclick is actually a suite of different applications.

I suppose you mean DFP (Doubleclick for Publishers). This is a google product but it doesn't necessarily display ads from Google Network. With DFP you can show ads from Google but also other networks or even your own negotiated ads. So in other words even though it's a Google Product it's designed to give publishers freedom on which ads will be displayed. If you use DFP to only show ads from Google Network such as adSense you can rest assured these are reviewed by Google for such social engineering tactics.

I suppose they might block sites that use DFP to serve ads from other networks they can't vet and don't go through good review and were detected to contain bad Ads.

[putaside]

Google partners with these other networks (like Advertising.com and AppNexus). In the end it is their DFP .js code that invokes malicious ads/redirects. I blame the last in the chain, and I do not think that is unfair.

Not all ads on adSense are reviewed. Or, if they are, the reviewers are doing a poor job. Locally, and on mobile devices, I get adSense ads like: "Your device has a virus. Click here to download our anti-virus software for 4.99$." Then the page shows the "404 broken robot"-graphic (it is an ad on adSense network, which spoofs Google, and scares you into downloading a paid, probably worthless, virus-scanner).

I've reported numerous ads to Google over the years: Some competitors who were not playing by the rules, but also redirects to porn websites and the (locally) infamous: Your Whatsapp has expired! Enter your phone number, so we can mine that, and charge you weekly for a fake app.

> I suppose they might block sites that use DFP to serve ads from other networks they can't vet and don't go through good review and were detected to contain bad Ads.

Likely, but this seems weird (fix/penalize DFP partner networks first, don't penalize your users for using your own product). Also from a competitor sense: I am all for protection of users (use an adblocker!), but it does not feel right that a company with the resources of Google, finally manages to rid their own network of these malicious ads (let's say for sake of argument they have), then immediately puts the ban-hammer on their less resourceful competitor networks. Perhaps that is a side-effect of owning both analytics, the ad networks, and the browser people use to view those ads.

[putasidemobile]

I may have been too harsh on Google. If Google implements: "Hey, this javascript ad code is trying to redirect to another domain, let's throw up a warning." then that would be great (no matter if it hits their own ads).

Google may also share information from SafeBrowsing with other companies, so they can opt to fix their stuff.

Also that what I may view as terrible ads, Google sees as companies gradually finding the razorsharp edge of their program policies.

For obvious reasons, we do not hear (or see) anything about the successful efforts to keep scam and spam away from their networks.

[zaphar]

Typically at Google the teams in charge of a service like this and ads are pretty heavily fire-walled. After working there it would not at all surprise me if they did exactly that.