Google Play Store has removed almost 600 Android apps due to serving “disruptive” ads, the company announced through a blog post on Thursday. Alongside announcing the removal, the search giant revealed that it had banned all the apps that have been removed from the Play Store from its ad monetization platforms Google AdMob and Google Ad Manager for breaking its disruptive ad strategy and denied an interstitial policy. The development of smartphone selection is giving a push to mobile ad scams in modern times.
As per Google’s definition, disruptive ads are “are displayed to users in unexpected ways, including impairing or interfering with the usability of device functions”. The policy underlines that these ads appear in a way that results in inadvertent clicks and interfere with normal use — without providing a clear means to dismiss the ad.
This is an invasive manoeuvre that appears in poor user expertise that often disturbs key device functions and this way can lead to accidental ad clicks that waste advertiser spends stated Per Bjorke, Senior Product Manager, Ad Traffic Quality, Google.
Google claims to have a machine-learning based approach in place to detect when apps show out-of-context ads. This has helped enforce the latest removal. Going forward, the company is also in plans to bring new technologies “to detect and prevent emerging threats that can generate invalid traffic, including disruptive ads, and to find more methods to accommodate and develop” the platform and ecosystem strategies to bypass bad behavior for both users and promoters.
The apps that have been excluded from Google Play Store were essentially made by developers based in China, Hong Kong, India, and Singapore, Bjorke told BuzzFeed News. However, the names of particular apps and developers continue to be a conundrum.
Bjorke also particularized BuzzFeed News that Google had begun refunding the brands whose advertisements were presented through disruptive ads.
Google attempted to take similar protective measures in the past as well. In July last year, Google banned Chinese developer CooTek for using an adware plugin to send disruptive ads even when an app was not in use. The Android maker in the past also spotted hosting apps on Google Play Store with adware.
