Google suspended 2.9 million advertiser accounts in India in 2024: Report

Google has removed over 247.4 million advertisements and suspended 2.9 million advertiser accounts in India during 2024 as part of its global efforts to combat malicious advertising, according to the company's latest Ads Safety Report released today.

The India-specific findings reveal that financial services violations topped the list of problematic advertisements, followed by trademark infringements and ads abusing the network. Personalised ads and gambling/games content rounded out the top five policy violations in the country.

"With billions worldwide depending on Google for reliable information, including ads, our dedicated team works tirelessly to protect the digital advertising ecosystem," Google stated in its India report, emphasising the need for continuous vigilance in the rapidly evolving ad safety landscape.

The global statistics paint an even more expansive picture of Google's enforcement efforts. Worldwide, the tech giant blocked or removed 5.1 billion advertisements that violated its policies and restricted an additional 9.1 billion ads that contained legally or culturally sensitive content. The company also suspended more than 39.2 million advertiser accounts globally, with the vast majority being suspended before they could serve a single ad.

AI powering enhanced enforcement

Google's 2024 report highlights how artificial intelligence, particularly Large Language Models (LLMs), has transformed its approach to ad safety. Unlike previous machine learning systems that required extensive datasets, the company's newer AI models can operate more efficiently, recognising emerging threats and distinguishing legitimate businesses from scams with far less training data.

"Last year, we continued to invest heavily in making our LLMs more advanced than ever, launching over 50 enhancements to our models which enabled more efficient and precise enforcement at scale," the report notes. These AI-powered systems were particularly effective in publisher policy enforcement, contributing to the detection of 97% of the pages that received enforcement actions.

“By using these models, we significantly expedited site reviews, enabling quicker monetisation while keeping ads from appearing on violative pages,” the report says.

The company acted against 1.3 billion publisher pages and took broader site-level enforcement action on over 220,000 publisher sites. Sexual content represented the largest category of publisher policy violations, with 1.2 billion pages affected.

Combating sophisticated scams

The report details Google's efforts to counter new scam techniques, including the rise of public figure impersonation ads using AI-generated imagery or audio. In response, Google assembled a dedicated team of over 100 experts to develop countermeasures, resulting in the permanent suspension of over 700,000 advertiser accounts and a 90% reduction in reports of such scams.

Overall in 2024, Google blocked or removed 415 million ads and suspended more than 5 million accounts for violating policies most closely associated with scams.

Election integrity focus

With 2024 being a major year for global elections, Google expanded its identity verification and transparency requirements for election advertisers. The company verified more than 8,900 new election advertisers and removed 10.7 million election ads from unverified accounts.

Google also became the first company to launch disclosure requirements for AI-generated content in election advertisements, building upon its existing transparency initiatives.