Google suspends 2.9 million ad accounts in India citing policy violations, targets fight against AI-generated public figure impersonation scams

NEW DELHI: Alphabet’s Google on Wednesday said that it suspended 2.9 million advertiser accounts in India and removed 247.4 million ads in 2024 for violating its ad policies.
“In India, 247.4 million ads were removed and 2.9 million advertiser accounts were suspended,” the Company said in a report.
Globally, Google has suspended more than 39.2 million advertiser accounts, took down 5.1 billion ads, and restricted over 9.1 billion ads, the company’s annual Ads Safety Report added.
“The company also adapted its defences against ever-evolving scams, notably the rise of AI-generated public figure impersonation ads,” Google said.
According to the report, in 2024, the organisation implemented more than 50 improvements to its LLMs (large language models), expediting complex investigations and enhancing the identification of fraudulent activities and suspicious signals during account creation.
A specialised team of over 100 professionals collaborated to implement protective measures, including updating policies to target scam advertisers. This led to the permanent suspension of more than 700,000 advertiser accounts, the company report said.
“This led to a 90 per cent drop in reports of this kind of scam ad last year,” it added.
The five primary policy violations highlighted in the report included: