Google removed 10.7 million unverified election ads in 2024, 2.7 million ad accounts in India | Technology News

Google said it took down over 10.7 million election ads that came from unverified advertisers 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 political parties served on digital platforms such as Google and YouTube played a major role in influencing the electorate.
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Several political parties were found to have spent substantial sums of money on advertising campaigns in the run up to the general election. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which secured a third consecutive term in the polls, had 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
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 regered their account and verifying the identity of the advertiser itself.
“This program now covers more than 200 countries and territories, with over 90% of ads seen people on Google coming from verified advertisers, on average,” Google said.
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.Story continues below this ad
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 regered in India.