It suspended around 270,000 accounts and banned 400,000 websites from its network.
Microsoft took down more than three billion advertisements in 2021 – nearly double the number of bad adverts it took down in 2020 and almost equal to the 3.1 billion ads Google blocked in 2020. According to Microsoft’s 2021 Ads Safety Report, advancements in machine learning, multilingual models and human moderation contributed to the significant growth of ad takedowns.
The Windows company also noted ongoing and rising threats. These threats included fake celebrity-endorsed investment ads and more sophisticated account takeover attempts. Microsoft also investigated around 70,000 complaints about ads not complying with its advertising policies in 2021.
They found around 60% of accounts were in violation, and the most common type of complaint was – Trademark infringement. The top threat to Microsoft’s advertisers in 2021 was – bad actors using new techniques to get past multi-factor authentication.
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