This debate takes place in every vertical, because there are potentially misleading or “bad” ads in every vertical.

There will never be 100% rejection of all “bad” ads. First, because the definition of a bad ad is subjective; second, because enforcement of policies always relies on the use of policy instruments with varying degrees of effectiveness in achieving policy outcomes.

If cost of enforcement were not a factor and if a single person’s view of what the policies themselves should be were used as the sole guideline, you might get to 99.9% or so effectiveness in keeping the baddies out.

Google relies on a combination of policy development, policy reviews, policy enforcement by people, algorithmic/automated checks, quality scores, and so on. Any such system is fallible.

Policy-making is also not an exact science.

On this specific issue (types of spammers advertising), in fact, Google has placed accounts on hold completely while they review a whole category. Presumably that’s while they develop practical guidelines for the category.

This isolated case is just part of the overall scenario which is basically that you can only coherently reject/ban advertisers if you do it based on a consistent policy. Because such policies risk raising the ire of legit advertisers, those policies are calibrated rather loosely in most industries. You can’t go around declining ads in certain product categories just because they “seem unsavory”.

BTW:

It is not completely surprising how some NEWer website owners might be swayed by these emails - they are falling for Tried & True & Pre-tested persuasion strategies .

Imagine not having the sophistication of the readers of this forum - and being naively frustrated about

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Moderator: I edited out the active links.

The problem is, as long as they aren’t charging for the download it probably isn’t against the licences Mozilla is under. I am not sure what Google can do in that case. It is certainly really slimy, maybe that is enough.

If I were in charge, I’d probably ban these outright rip-offs that merely prey on user confusion and naivete, without adding any bona fide value. Might be a bit tricky to draft the rule rigorously, but that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t try. (And the “miracle cures” and similar entries, already on the list, show Google’s willingness to add similar know-it-when-we-see-it restrictions.)

I guess that’s what AdWords managers need to do - look at the site as well as the ad. If they don’t at least glance at the site the ad is for, then you could sneak ANYTHING past them! I mean, kiddie porn? No problem, just use an ad with unrelated but interesting search words. You see what I mean?

You know what to look at our, I think you need to sit them down and teach them what not to allow. That would save you some embarassment later on. I mean, do no evil? Come on, the AdWords managers haven’t been taught properly!