In 2024, Google took aggressive action against ad fraud, suspending a staggering 39.2 million advertiser accounts—over three times more than the year before. The move marks the tech giant’s most ambitious push yet to clean up its ad ecosystem, driven largely by AI advancements and tighter policy enforcement.
Behind this sweeping action is Google’s growing reliance on large language models (LLMs) and a refined detection system. By analyzing patterns like fake payment information and impersonated business identities, the company says it now identifies and removes most bad actors before a single ad goes live.
Throughout last year, Google rolled out over 50 AI-powered safety enhancements across its platforms. These improvements have helped the company strike early and with more precision, according to Alex Rodriguez, Google’s General Manager for Ads Safety. Speaking during a virtual press briefing, Rodriguez emphasized that while AI leads the charge, human oversight still plays a crucial role.
Google’s safety enforcement team includes more than 100 experts from various divisions, including Trust and Safety and DeepMind researchers. Their primary mission in 2024: tackle the rise in deepfake scam ads, especially those impersonating well-known public figures. The results? Over 30 new ad and publisher policy updates, technical countermeasures, and the suspension of over 700,000 accounts involved in these deceptive campaigns. Google claims this effort led to a 90% reduction in user reports related to deepfake ads.
U.S. and India Lead in Suspensions, But Global Impact Grows
While this crackdown was global in scope, the United States accounted for the highest number of suspensions—39.2 million advertiser accounts. Alongside these bans, Google also took down 1.8 billion ads, citing violations like healthcare misinformation, misuse of trademarks, and misleading personalized ads.
India, now the second-largest internet market after China, also faced significant enforcement. The country saw 2.9 million account suspensions and 247.4 million ads removed. Violations included financial fraud, gambling, and ad network abuse.
In total, Google blocked 5.1 billion ads and removed 1.3 billion publisher pages in 2024. While these numbers are slightly lower than 2023’s figures (5.5 billion ads blocked and 2.1 billion pages removed), the company sees this as a positive shift—proof that early intervention is cutting off bad actors before damage is done.
Additionally, 5 million accounts were banned for scam-related activity alone, with nearly half a billion scam-related ads taken down globally.
Safeguarding Elections and Improving Transparency
In an election-heavy year, Google also focused on political ad safety. The platform verified over 8,900 election advertisers and removed 10.7 million election-related ads. However, Rodriguez noted that election ads still represent a small fraction of overall ad activity and don’t significantly skew broader safety metrics.
Despite these sweeping efforts, mass account suspensions often raise fairness concerns. Google insists it offers a human-reviewed appeal process, allowing advertisers to challenge decisions.
Rodriguez acknowledged past frustrations with the company’s transparency, noting that many advertisers were confused by unclear suspension reasons. In response, Google updated several policies and messaging systems in 2024 to provide clearer, more actionable feedback for affected advertisers.
With 9.1 billion ads restricted, Google says it remains committed to refining its tools to balance strict enforcement with fairness. By pairing AI’s scale with human judgment, the company aims to make its ad ecosystem safer, more transparent, and better regulated than ever before.
