Google is now targeting bad ads over bad actors

Google said Thursday it has blocked a record 8.3 billion ads worldwide by 2025 — up from 5.1 billion a year ago. But the company has suspended far fewer advertiser accounts than might be suggested, raising questions about how it manages its platform.

The search giant highlighted the difference in 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 accuracy. Its AI-driven programs 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 ad security report and together indicate a broader shift in enforcement. While the most problematic ads are blocked, fewer advertiser accounts are suspended – indicating a shift from blocking bad actors directly to blocking individual ads.

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

The change also reflects Google’s broader push to integrate its Gemini models deeper into its core products and infrastructure, including advertising, where the company increasingly uses 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 more than 1.7 billion ads and suspended 3.3 million advertiser accounts in the US by 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 – almost double the previous year – as account suspensions fell to 1.7 million from 2.9 million, with trademarks, financial services, and copyright issues among the top violations.

In a virtual forum, Keerat Sharma, VP and general manager of privacy and ad security at Google, told reporters that the company has shifted to more targeted, AI-driven enforcement “on a much smaller scale, at a creative level, instead of using a more blunt tool, like advertising targeting.” He added that this approach has helped reduce wrongful suspensions by 80% year on year.

Google’s security measures, including advertiser verification (a process that requires businesses to verify their identity before serving ads), are designed to prevent bad actors from creating accounts in the first place, Sharma said, adding that this has contributed to a decrease in suspensions.

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