Microsoft Advertising

Report March 2025

Submitted
Commitment 2
Relevant Signatories participating in advertising commit to prevent the misuse of advertising systems to disseminate Disinformation in the form of advertising messages.
We signed up to the following measures of this commitment
Measure 2.1 Measure 2.2 Measure 2.3 Measure 2.4
In line with this commitment, did you deploy new implementation measures (e.g. changes to your terms of service, new tools, new policies, etc)?
Yes
If yes, list these implementation measures here
Microsoft Advertising implemented the following measures: 
  • Iterated on its automated detection mechanisms
    • Improve AI model to detect clickbait and low-quality ads
    • Continue expanding to multiple internal domain trust signals as well as partner signals to make domain detection more robust 
Do you plan to put further implementation measures in place in the next 6 months to substantially improve the maturity of the implementation of this commitment?
Yes
If yes, which further implementation measures do you plan to put in place in the next 6 months?
Microsoft Advertising plans to continue to assess its policies and services and to update them as warranted.
Measure 2.1
Relevant Signatories will develop, deploy, and enforce appropriate and tailored advertising policies that address the misuse of their advertising systems for propagating harmful Disinformation in advertising messages and in the promotion of content.
QRE 2.1.1
Signatories will disclose and outline the policies they develop, deploy, and enforce to meet the goals of Measure 2.1 and will link to relevant public pages in their help centres.
As described in QRE 2.2.1, Microsoft Advertising employs a set of policies that prohibit advertising content that is misleading, deceptive, fraudulent, or harmful, including misinformation and disinformation.  In December 2022, Microsoft Advertising rolled out revised network-wide policies to avoid the publishing and carriage of harmful Disinformation and the placement of advertising next to Disinformation content. Such policies prohibit ads or sites that contain or lead to Disinformation. To enforce this policy, “We may use a combination of internal signals and trusted third-party data or information sources to reject, block, or take down ads or sites that contain disinformation or send traffic to pages containing disinformation. We may block at the domain level landing pages or sites that violate this policy.” Please see here for our main policy page.
SLI 2.1.1
Signatories will report, quantitatively, on actions they took to enforce each of the policies mentioned in the qualitative part of this service level indicator, at the Member State or language level. This could include, for instance, actions to remove, to block, or to otherwise restrict harmful Disinformation in advertising messages and in the promotion of content.
Microsoft Advertising assesses the impact of its actions by reporting on the ads that were loaded in the Microsoft Advertising campaign system but that we blocked from being displayed across our network and estimating the number of individual ad impressions that such ads would have generated (i.e., ads that would have been served to consumers).  

“Unique Ads” are the individual advertisements (or ad creatives) loaded in the Microsoft Advertising campaign system that we blocked. During the reporting period, 2,193,970 ads were blocked globally (see “Global” total), including in all EEA Member States. For transparency purposes, the metrics mentioned in the table for each Member State are lower, as these are additional ads that were blocked in each respective Member State. Hence the totals for ads blocked in the EU and EEA as a whole, are in this instance larger than the Global total.

“Blocked Impressions” means the individual ad impressions that such Unique Ads would have generated if not blocked. 

“Unique Domains” means the web domain or URLs that the Unique Ads would have directed customers to. 

For example, if Advertiser A loads 10 ads in the campaign system promoting two websites associated with disinformation that would have been displayed 100 times, Microsoft Advertising will report 10 Unique Ads, 100 Blocked Impressions, and two Unique Domains. In practice, however, no consumer ever see any of these ads. 

“Account suspension” means suspending access to the Microsoft Advertising services to advertisers who willingly or repeatedly violate our terms or policies prohibiting phishing, malware, or payment Instrument fraud. Suspended customers cannot serve ads until they redress the violation. 

Country Unique Ads Blocked Impressions Unique Domains Account suspension
Austria 45,895 15,099,520 432 321
Belgium 13,602 16,341,515 489 679
Bulgaria 8,414 846,117 344 140
Croatia 5,557 589,799 254 25
Cyprus 6,005 385,434 285 139
Czech Republic 9,385 4,020,308 368 296
Denmark 11,955 3,736,810 377 453
Estonia 5,023 394,036 241 161
Finland 9,004 2,929,201 348 556
France 22,321 33,941,040 693 4378
Germany 184,877 169,260,210 735 7277
Greece 6,960 1,554,682 375 290
Hungary 8,412 1,381,649 336 61
Ireland 10,087 6,351,043 431 351
Italy 17,654 18,995,565 580 2022
Latvia 5,296 418,449 254 97
Lithuania 7,644 732,340 313 197
Luxembourg 5,616 736,362 300 43
Malta 4,377 274,817 241 27
Netherlands 13,072 13,276,757 579 1511
Poland 10,657 5,351,377 464 1068
Portugal 11,122 6,574,294 452 235
Romania 8,605 3,557,594 407 427
Slovakia 6,654 1,064,249 284 50
Slovenia 4,950 520,188 241 48
Spain 18,471 19,365,688 605 2857
Sweden 13,051 7,940,119 464 551
Iceland 3,771 312,425 222 23
Liechtenstein 1,058 61,850 126 5
Norway 13,590 3,895,944 411 426
Global 2,193,970 - - -
Total EU 2,668,636 335,639,163 10,892 24,260
Total EEA 2,687,055 339,909,383 11,651 24,714