Google Removes 24.7 Crore Advertisements, Suspends 2.9 Lakh Ad Accounts in India for Policy Violations

The world's most popular search engine Google suspended 2.9 million or 2.9 lakh advertiser accounts and removed over 247.4 million (24.7 crore) advertisements in India in 2024, as part of its global efforts to prevent fraudulent advertising, according to Google's '2024 Ads Safety Report'.

The Alphabet Inc. owned company in its annual ads safety report, released on Wednesday, said "In India, 247.4 million ads were removed and 2.9 million advertiser accounts were suspended."

Google Verified Election Advertisers in 2024 Polls

Previous year, 2024 was a year of global elections, with several major countries, including India, heading to the polls. Google verified over 8,900 new election advertisers and eliminated 10.7 million election advertising from unverified accounts throughout the globe. "As part of this effort, we continued to expand our identity verification and transparency requirements for election advertisers to new countries," said the company.

Financial services violations were the most common problematic advertisements, followed by trademark infringements and network abuse, according to data specific to India. Personalised ads and gambling or gaming content were also among the top five policy violations in the country.

In 2024, the company announced over 50 upgrades to its large language models (LLMs), which sped up complex investigations by identifying malicious parties and fraud signals such as fraudulent payment information during account setup.

Google stated, "The company also adapted its defences against ever-evolving scams, notably the rise of AI-generated public figure impersonation ads."

According to the Google report, over 7 thousand offending advertising accounts have been permanently suspended after a group of more than 100 experts came together to develop solutions, including updating the misrepresenting policy to ban advertisers that promote fraudulent content.

"To fight back, a team of over 100 experts was assembled to develop countermeasures, such as updating the Misrepresentation policy to suspend advertisers that promote these scams. This led to a 90 per cent drop in reports of this kind of scam ad last year," the Google blog mentioned.

NCLAT Rules Against Alphabet and Google in Play Store Case

The National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT), which handles company-related legal matters in India, made a decision in a case against Google last month. The case was about Google's Play Store policy.

As part of its ruling, the tribunal ordered that some parts (extracts) from a private letter which included Google's revenue data should be taken down. This private letter likely had sensitive or confidential financial information about Google, which the tribunal decided should not be made public.

Alphabet Inc. and Google Inc. have asked the NCLAT to remove Paragraphs 97 to 100 from its 104-page order. They submitted a letter dated October 6, 2022, which they said was a confidential document. This letter included private revenue details that were shared in response to earlier questions about their earnings.