Google said it took down over 10.7 million election ads that came from unverified advertisers globally in 2024, a 46 per cent increase from 2023 which saw action against 7.3 million elections ads from unverified advertisers.
The data was revealed as part of its annual Ads Safety Report that was published on Wednesday, 16 April. “The volume of election ads compared to our overall numbers is very small. But it’s a very important set, which is why we take additional focus on election ads. The big outlier at the top-level is accounts suspended, and those were more for broader concerns around scams or fraud,” Alex Rodriguez, General Manager, Ads Safety, Google, said in a virtual press briefing.
However, Rodriguez declined to share the percentage of overall election ads in 2024. The Lok Sabha polls were held in India last year, wherein ads by political parties served on digital platforms such as Google and YouTube played a major role in influencing the electorate.
Several political parties were found to have spent substantial sums of money on digital advertising campaigns in the run up to the general elections. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which secured a third consecutive term in the polls, spent Rs 156.95 crore to show advertisements on Google-owned platforms while Rs 24.63 crore went to Meta, according to the party’s expenditure report on contesting the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
Google’s policy states that all election ads must include a “paid for by” disclosure and will be made part of the ads compilation in its publicly available transparency report. In 2023, the company also introduced disclosure requirements for AI-generated content in election ads.
As per its report, Google also verified around 8,900 new election advertisers in the past year alone. The company’s verification process roughly involves two steps: Verifying the advertiser is based in the country where they registered their account and verifying the identity of the advertiser itself.
“This programme now covers more than 200 countries and territories, with over 90 per cent of ads seen by people on Google coming from verified advertisers, on average,” it said.
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The search giant further said that it blocked or removed a total of 5.1 billion ads last year and 39.2 million advertiser accounts globally, a nearly 200 per cent increase from 12.7 million advertiser accounts in 2023.
The vast majority of advertiser accounts were suspended before they ever served an ad, Google said. Out of the 39.2 million, around 2.9 million suspended ad accounts were registered in India.
Rise of public figure impersonation ads
Rodriguez noted that a key industry-wide trend observed in 2024 was public figure impersonation scams. This type of scam generally involved malicious actors making use of AI-generated images and audio to imply an affiliation with a celebrity or public figure. These elements were then promoted as ads on Google’s platforms.
The company said that it permanently suspended over 700,000 ad accounts that had violated its misrepresentation policy by promoting public figure impersonation scams. Google further claimed its action led to a 90 per cent drop in such scams last year.
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A total of 415 million ads and 5 million ad accounts were blocked or removed for violating Google’s policies by promoting scams.
146 million ads blocked for promoting gambling
Of the total 5.1 billion ads that were stopped from being shown to users, a majority of them (793.1 million) were found to have violated Google’s policy on abusing the ad network. This includes evasive ad content as well as ads that promote malware and use the Google advertising network to “gain an unfair traffic advantage.”
While 146 million ads promoting gambling and games were blocked last year, another 122.5 million ads were stopped for violating Google’s ad policies on adult content. Only 890,000 ads faced action for advertising counterfeit goods, the lowest number in the list.
Number of ads blocked or removed. (Image credit: Google)
Google’s policy on ads promoting online gambling requires that advertisers abide by local gambling laws and industry standards. In India, the Union Ministry of Broadcasting has issued multiple advisories warning online intermediaries like Google against “showing advertisements or promotional content on betting and gambling in any form.”
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Besides taking down ads that violate its policies, Google also restricts ads that are considered to be legally problematic or culturally insensitive based on the audience and the region.
“We work hard to avoid showing ads when and where they might be inappropriate. For that reason, we allow the promotion of the content below, but on a limited basis. These promotions may not show to every user in every location, and advertisers may need to meet additional requirements before their ads are eligible to run,” the company said.
A total of 9.1 billion ads were restricted in 2024. While a majority of them (428.8 million) were restricted for legal reasons, 108.9 million restricted ads fell in the gambling and games category. They were in addition to 96 million adult content ads, 115.1 million copyright infringing ads, and 106.6 million ads promoting healthcare and medicines.
Restricted ads in 2024. (Image credit: Google)
“Blocked or restricted ads on 1.3 billion publisher pages and took broader site-level enforcement action on over 220,000 publisher sites,” the report read.