Google Cracks Down Blocking Billions of Bad Ads This Year
Google announced Wednesday it has already taken down a staggering 5.1 billion malicious ads and suspended over 39 million advertiser accounts in 2024. The tech giant says its proactive systems are catching the vast majority of these threats before they even reach users.
Google has been busy battling bad actors in the advertising world. They revealed that they suspended a whopping 39.2 million advertiser accounts in 2024! The good news? Their systems caught most of these accounts before they could unleash harmful ads on unsuspecting users.
Think about this: Google blocked 5.1 billion bad ads. And they restricted another 9.1 billion. Plus, ads were blocked or restricted on 1.3 billion pages. Scam-related violations alone led to over 5 million account suspensions. That's a lot of shady activity!
What Kind of Ads Were Flagged?
So, what exactly were these advertisers doing wrong? Here's a quick rundown of the top offenses:
- Ad network abuse (a massive 793.1 million instances)
- Misusing trademarks (503.1 million)
- Problems with personalized ads (491.3 million)
- Violating legal requirements (280.3 million)
- Issues with financial services ads (193.7 million)
- Plain old misrepresentation (146.9 million)
And the pages where these ads were nixed? They often featured things like sexual content, dangerous or derogatory material, malware, shocking content, weapons sales, online gambling, and more. You get the picture – not exactly family-friendly.
AI to the Rescue?
Google says they're leaning heavily on AI to spot emerging threats. They're using things like business impersonation and shady payment details as red flags to shut down ad fraud early. Sounds like a smart move.
"For instance, we tackled AI-generated deepfakes used in public figure impersonation scams," the company explained. They suspended over 700,000 accounts for that specific issue alone! All part of a bigger push that blocked or removed 415 million ads and suspended over 5 million accounts for scammy behavior.
Verification is Key
To boost transparency, Google expanded its Advertiser identity verification to over 200 countries. They're also cracking down on AI-generated content in election ads. In 2024, they verified over 8,900 new election advertisers and removed over 10.7 million election ads from unverified accounts. Good riddance!
Why This Matters
Google's ad safety efforts are crucial because malvertising is still a major way that malware gets onto our computers. Crooks use fake ads on Google Search (and other search engines) to trick people into visiting dangerous websites and downloading nasty stuff like cryptocurrency miners.
The ad safety landscape is always changing. New technologies like AI create new opportunities for abuse, so Google has to stay on its toes. It's a constant battle to keep the online world safe from bad ads.
