Google is now targeting bad ads over bad actors

Google said Thursday it blocked a record 8.3 billion ads globally in 2025 — up from 5.1 billion the year before. But the company suspended far fewer advertiser accounts than that surge might suggest, raising questions about how it polices its platform.

The search giant attributed the disparity to its growing use of AI, particularly its Gemini models — Google’s family of AI systems — which Google says allow it to detect and block policy-violating ads earlier and with greater precision. Its AI-driven systems caught more than 99% of such ads last year before they were shown to users, the company said.

Both findings come from Google’s 2025 Ads Safety Report and together reflect a broader change in enforcement. While more problematic ads are being stopped, fewer advertiser accounts are being suspended — indicating a transition from banning bad actors outright to blocking individual ads on a case-by-case basis.

Google said the rise in blocked ads also reflects the growing use of generative AI by scammers to produce deceptive content at scale, with its Gemini models helping detect patterns across large campaigns and block them earlier.

The shift also mirrors a wider push by Google to integrate its Gemini models more deeply into its core products and infrastructure, including advertising, where the company is increasingly using AI to automate campaign creation, detect policy violations, and respond to emerging threats in real time.

Among the blocked ads and suspended accounts, 602 million ads and 4 million advertiser accounts were linked to scams, the company said.

Google removed over 1.7 billion ads and suspended 3.3 million advertiser accounts in the U.S. in 2025, with ad network abuse, misrepresentation, and sexual content among the most common violations. In India, Google’s largest market by users, it blocked 483.7 million ads — nearly double the previous year — even as account suspensions fell to 1.7 million from 2.9 million, with trademarks, financial services, and copyright issues among the top violations.

At a virtual briefing, Keerat Sharma, VP and general manager of ads privacy and safety at Google, told reporters the company has shifted toward more targeted, AI-driven enforcement “at a much more granular level, on a creative level, as opposed to using a much more blunt instrument, like advertiser suspensions.” He added that the approach has helped reduce incorrect suspensions by 80% year over year.

Google’s layered defenses, including advertiser verification (a process that requires businesses to confirm their identity before running ads), are designed to prevent bad actors from creating accounts in the first place, Sharma said, adding that this has contributed to the decline in suspensions.

The numbers, Sharma said, are likely to fluctuate over time as Google rolls out new defenses and bad actors adapt, with the company aiming to stop harmful ads as early in the pipeline as possible.