Google will block more than 5.5 billion ads from its ad network by 2023. In 2022 there were approximately 5.2 billion. The American tech company also deleted 12.7 million advertiser accounts last year. In 2022, that number was still 6.7 million.
Google writes in its annual Ads Safety report that last year it removed 206.5 million advertisements that violated the rules on misrepresentation of people. The US search giant says it has also discovered some targeted ad campaigns using the likenesses of public figures to defraud internet users by the end of 2023. This often involved deepfakes.
Last year, 273 million advertisements were also removed that allegedly violated the rules on financial services. Google also writes that more than 1 billion advertisements have been removed that the company believes attempted to abuse the advertising network. They did this, for example, by helping to spread malware.
Google believes that 2023 was an important year for generative AI. The company says this type of artificial intelligence has been used for several years to check millions of advertisements before they can be published. The company says it has trained its language models on millions of examples that violate its policies. These language models reportedly also help the tech giant detect new trends from rogue advertisers.