Summary: Google cracked down hard on ad fraud in 2024, suspending over 39 million advertiser accounts—more than triple the previous year. Armed with more than 50 LLM-powered tools, 30+ new policies, and a team of over 100 human experts, the company blocked 5.1 billion ads and slashed deepfake ad reports by 90%. Most bad actors never even got the chance to run an ad.
Google just dropped a bombshell stat: it suspended a staggering 39.2 million advertiser accounts in 2024. That’s more than triple what it booted in 2023. Why? Because fraud is getting smarter—and so is Google.
The company says it used large language models (LLMs) alongside red flags like business impersonation and shady payment info to shut down most of these accounts before a single ad even went live.
To beef up its defenses, Google rolled out over 50 LLM-powered upgrades across its ad safety systems last year. But it’s not all AI doing the heavy lifting. Alex Rodriguez, Google’s GM of Ads Safety, said during a media roundtable that “humans are still in the loop.”
Google’s anti-fraud squad is deep. Over 100 experts—from the Ads Safety and Trust & Safety teams to DeepMind researchers—are working together to track scams, especially deepfake ads using public figure impersonations. And yes, they’ve built countermeasures to fight back.
These changes resulted in a 90% drop in reports of deepfake ads
Google wasn’t messing around in 2024. The company rolled out more than 30 new ad and publisher policy updates, along with a bunch of technical countermeasures, to clean up its ad platform. The result? Over 700,000 bad ad accounts got the boot.
And it paid off—big time. Google says reports of deepfake ads dropped by 90% across its platforms.
Out of the 39.2 million ad accounts suspended last year, around 5 million were flagged specifically for scam-related violations. Google also took down 500 million scam-related ads. In total, it blocked 5.1 billion ads in 2024. That’s actually a bit less than 2023’s 5.5 billion—but that’s a good thing.
Why? Because it means Google’s getting ahead of the problem. The company is spotting scammers early and stopping their ads from ever showing up in the first place—whether it’s on Google Search, YouTube, or your favorite news site.
