Google Suspends Millions of Advertiser Accounts in Massive Ad Fraud Crackdown

Apr 16, 2025
TechCrunch
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Summary

In a massive ad fraud crackdown, Google suspended an unprecedented 39.2 million advertiser accounts in 2024, tripling the previous year's figure, by leveraging AI and policy updates to combat business impersonation, deepfakes, and illegitimate payment details.

Key Points

  • Google suspended 39.2 million advertiser accounts on its platform in 2024, tripling the number from the previous year, in a crackdown on ad fraud.
  • Google leveraged large language models and used signals like business impersonation and illegitimate payment details to suspend a majority of ad accounts before they served any ads.
  • Google introduced technical countermeasures and policy updates last year, leading to a 90% drop in reports of deepfake ads and the suspension of over 700,000 offending advertising accounts.

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