Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
Google has removed almost 600 “disruptive” Android apps from the Play Store and banned their developers in its latest effort to rein in mobile ad fraud, the company announced on Thursday. Google’s policy does not allow ads that display when an app is not in use or that trick users to click on ads by mistake.
The company says it defines disruptive ads as “ads that are displayed to users in unexpected ways, including impairing or interfering with the usability of device functions,” like a full-screen ad that pops up during a phone call or when using navigation apps, according to Per Bjorke, Google’s senior product manager for ad traffic quality who wrote the company blog post.
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