Google suspends 2.9 million ad accounts in India, removes 247.4 million ads

Google suspended over 39.2 million advertiser accounts globally. (Courtesy: Reuters photo)

Internet giant Google suspended 2.9 million advertisers' accounts in India and removed 247.4 million ads in 2024 for abusing its advertisement policy, the company said in a report on Wednesday.

Globally, Google suspended over 39.2 million advertiser accounts, removed 5.1 billion ads and restricted over 9.1 billion ads, the company said in its annual ads safety report.

"In India, 247.4 million ads were removed and 2.9 million advertiser accounts were suspended," the report said.

The company said it launched over 50 enhancements to its LLMs (large language models) in 2024, which sped up complex investigations, helping identify bad actors and fraud signals like illegitimate payment information during account set-up.

"The company also adapted its defences against ever-evolving scams, notably the rise of AI-generated public figure impersonation ads," Google said in a blog on the report.

The company said a team of over 100 experts assembled to develop countermeasures, such as updating the misrepresentation policy to suspend advertisers promoting scams, which resulted in the permanent suspension of more than 700 thousand offending advertiser accounts.

"This led to a 90 per cent drop in reports of this kind of scam ad last year," the blog said.