Why does Adsense still allow bad actors on its network?

02.02.2018

Today we spotted an ad on Kittysplit that opened a popup on mobile which couldn’t be closed. Here’s a screenshot:

The ad falsely claimed that a virus was installed on the device and completely broke the user experience.

We use Adsense for our ads which claims to remove bad ads. This is obviously not the case.

A quick Google search reveals that ads for the domain Wiserapps have been a problem for at least a year. How on earth can it be that ads pointing to the domain are still allowed? How can it be that Google can’t automatically identify ads that open popups?

The most charitable explanation is that Google is just not that interested in solving the problem. Very disappointing.