Report: Google suspends over 39.2 million ad accounts using AI in 2024

Google suspended 39.2 million advertiser accounts on its platform in 2024 using artificial intelligence (AI). The tech giant also removed over 5.1 billion ads, restricted over 9.1 billion ads, blocked or restricted ads on 1.3 billion publisher pages and took broader site-level enforcement action on over 220,000 publisher sites.

This is according to Google's Ads Safety Report 2024 that highlights how AI is not only enforcing against bad ads but improving the company's ability to prevent fraudsters from entering its ecosystem.

Google also leveraged the power of AI to improve enforcement, including the launch of over 50 enhancements to its latest Large Language Models (LLMs) which enabled more efficient and precise enforcements at scale. This resulted in the company's AI-powered models contributing to the detection and enforcement of 97% of the pages it took action on in 2024.

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Additionally, Google kept billions of policy-violating ads from showing using tools such as the advertiser identity verification, a requirement in place for all advertisers to complete as part of a gradual rollout of Google’s transparency efforts. The programme now covers more than 200 countries and territories, with over 90% of ads seen by people on Google coming from verified advertisers, on average according to the report. 

Google also noted that it was always adapting to combat ever-evolving scams, hence, through a team of experts, it analysed these scams and developed countermeasures, including updating its misrepresentation policy to suspend advertisers that promote these scams.

In the update, Google stated that the policy was revised to include enticing users to part with money or information by impersonating or falsely implying affiliation with or endorsement by a public figure, brand, or organisation.

As a result, Google was able to permanently suspend over 700,000 offending advertiser accounts, which led to a 90% drop in reports of this kind of scam ad last year. In 2024, the company blocked or removed 415 million ads and suspended over 5 million accounts for violating its ads policies most closely associated with scams. 

With regards to safeguarding election integrity worldwide, Google expanded its identity verification and transparency requirements for election advertisers to new countries. These measures help ensure users around the world are able to identify election ads and know who paid for election ads they see.

In the past year, the company verified more than 8,900 new election advertisers and removed 10.7 million election ads from unverified accounts.

"The ad safety landscape is constantly changing, reshaped by technological breakthroughs like advancements in AI, emerging abuse tactics, and global events, demanding continuous agility from our industry. In this dynamic environment, we are meeting these challenges head-on, deploying cutting-edge technology and collaborating with partners to foster a safer online experience for everyone," Google said in the report. 

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