Google blocked 5.1 billion ads and suspended more than 39.2 million advertiser accounts in 2024, according to its 2024 Ads Safety Report released this week.

The company says the increasing enforcement activity is caused by the growing threat of AI-generated content, impersonation scams, and abuse of its ad platform.

In particular, Google highlighted the use of generative AI tools to create deepfake video impersonations of celebrities and public figures to promote scams, which in the BleepingComputer experience are commonly investment and cryptocurrency scams.

As a result, Google says it permanently suspended over 700,000 advertiser accounts for policy violations related to AI-driven impersonation scams. 

“To fight back, we quickly assembled a dedicated team of over 100 experts to analyze these scams and develop effective countermeasures, such as updating our Misrepresentation policy to suspend advertisers that promote these scams,” explains Google’s 2024 Ads Safety Report.

“As a result, we were able to permanently suspend over 700,000 offending advertiser accounts. This led to a 90% drop in reports of this kind of scam ad last year. While we are encouraged by this progress, we continue to work to prevent these scams.”

While AI may be driving increased scams and malicious advertisements, Google also credits it for helping identify and enforce its policies on publisher pages.

In 2024, the company added over 50 enhancements to its machine-learning models to help detect new threats before users could report them.

In addition to advertiser suspensions, Google removed or blocked ads across numerous categories:

• 193.7 million for financial services
• 146 million for gambling and game-related
• 122.5 million for adult content
• 104.8 million for healthcare

The company also enforced its ad policies against publishers, issuing policy violations against 1.3 billion web pages and 220,000 publisher sites.

Election-related advertising also saw an increase in 2024, with the company verifying 8,900 new election advertisers and removing 10.7 million election ads from unverified accounts