Google blocks 247.4 million ads, suspends 2.9 million ad accounts in 2024 in India

Dhruv Raghavon 3 minute read
3 minute read

Google blocked 247.4 million ads in India the company revealed in its latest Ads Safety Report 2024. Additionally, it suspended 2.9 million advertiser accounts in the country on various grounds of violations.

Globally, the search engine developer suspended over 39.2 million advertiser accounts. In 2023, Google suspended only 12.7 million advertiser accounts globally, a third of the 2024 figures

What does the report say about India?

The tech giant removed 247.4 million ads in India on the grounds of violation of its advertisement policy in 2024. Additionally, the company suspended over 2.9 million advertiser accounts. The report also highlighted the top five policy violations committed by advertisers. The list includes financial services violations, trademark policy violations, abusing the ad network, personalised ads, and gambling and games, among others. However, the report does not specify how many accounts were suspended in India for each of these violations. 

“We support responsible gambling advertising and require that advertisers abide by local gambling laws and industry standards,” Google’s advertising policy on gambling promotion reads. “Gambling and online gambling-promoting content ads and destinations must also only target approved countries, have a landing page that displays information about responsible gambling, and never target minors”, the policy further says.

Google’s actions against “bad actors” globally:

Globally, the US-based search engine developer removed over 5.1 billion advertisements, restricted over 9.1 billion advertisements, and suspended over 39.2 million advertiser accounts in 2024. 

Out of the 9.1 billion restricted ads, the tech giant restricted 115.1 million ads for copyright violations, 108.9 million for gambling and games-related violations, and 96 million for adult content. Elsewhere, it removed 146 million ads for gambling and games, 122.5 million ads for adult content, and 71.4 million ads for copyright violations.

The company also “blocked or restricted” ads on 1.3 billion publisher pages globally in 2024. Google took action on 1.2 billion such pages for sexual content, 24.8 million for dangerous or derogatory content, 19.3 million for malicious or unwanted software, and 8.8 million for online gambling.

While Google suspended over three times the number of advertiser accounts in 2024 when compared to 2023, it removed slightly fewer ads in 2024 than in 2023: 5.5 billion in 2023 as opposed to 5.1 billion in 2024. Similarly, the number of publisher pages on which the company blocked or restricted ads fell by 800 million, to 1.3 billion pages in 2024 from 2.1 billion pages in 2023. The tech giant took broader site-level enforcement action on more than 220,000 publisher pages in 2024, down from 395,000 in 2023.

In 2024, the company also revised its ads and publisher policies with more than 30 updates, according to the report.

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Used AI to Remove Ads and Suspend Accounts:

According to the 2024 Ads Safety Report, Google launched over 50 enhancements to its AI models that helped in the efficient and precise enforcement of its ads and publisher policies at scale. The search engine developer said: “Bad actors constantly adapt their tactics to evade detection, making policy enforcement an always-on endeavor. While our earlier machine learning models required vast datasets for training, our latest Large Language Models (LLMs) operate much more efficiently.”

The company claimed that its AI-powered models contributed to the detection and enforcement of 97% of the pages it took action on in 2024. “By using these models, we significantly expedited site reviews, enabling quicker monetization while keeping ads from appearing on violative pages,” the tech giant added.

Google Ads and AI:

In 2024, Google started rolling out advertisements in AI-generated search results for mobile users in the US within AI Overviews. In its blog post, the company said that ads will appear within AI Overviews when it is relevant to the query and the response provided. For example, AI Overviews will show ads for stain removers, along with common household products if a user asks Google: “How do I get a grass stain out of jeans?”

The tech giant also highlighted that it will explicitly mark such ads as “sponsored.” It said that people who engage with AI Overviews are “more satisfied with their search results and find ads appearing above and below the overview helpful.”

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