An attack ad on Google run by the Conservatives broke Google rules because of an error by Google.
The ad was shown as the top result on a Google search for “Labour” as the Labour Party launched its manifesto. It initially appeared without a disclaimer, in breach of Google’s terms and conditions which state that “all election ads in the EU… show a disclosure that identifies who paid for the ad”.
I surmise that this ad was allowed to run without attribution because no one at Google actually vetted it. Google assumes advertisers will follow the rules and relies on automated filtering to weed out the majority of bad actors. If they don\’t, users will flag transgressions and Google will resolve them later. This approve now, remove later approach is used by a lot of social media, ad networks, and user-generated content platforms that deal with a high volume of content. Those who abuse these platforms can often reach a significant number of people before they\’re reprimanded and their content removed.