Google Ads Suspended 90% More Advertisers This Year Than Last & Removed 5.5 Billion Ads

Google has released the 2023 Google Ads safety report sharing that Google has removed 5.5 billion ads, suspended 12.7 million advertiser accounts, restricted over 6.9 billion ads, and restricted ads from showing up on 2.1 billion publisher pages. That is about 6% more ads removed, 90% more suspended advertiser accounts, restricted 60% more ads, and 40% more ads removed from publisher pages when compared to last year.

Here are quotes from Google on these stats:

In 2023, we blocked or removed over 5.5 billion ads, slightly up from the prior year, and 12.7 million advertiser accounts, nearly double from the previous year.

In 2023, we blocked or restricted ads from serving on more than 2.1 billion publisher pages, up slightly from 2022. We took broader site-level enforcement action on more than 395,000 publisher sites, up markedly from 2022.

Here are the raw numbers by year:

Here is the bar chart:

Here are charts from the safety report breaking down these numbers by category:

Google posted on X, “From blocking billions of bad ads to improving verification and transparency for political ads, we’re committed to maintaining a healthy ad-supported internet.”

Duncan Lennox, VP & GM of Google Ads Privacy and Safety also wrote:

The key trend in 2023 was the impact of generative AI. This new technology introduced significant and exciting changes to the digital advertising industry, from performance optimization to image editing. Of course, generative AI also presents new challenges. We take these challenges seriously and will outline the work we are doing to address them head-on.

Just as importantly, generative AI presents a unique opportunity to improve our enforcement efforts significantly. Our teams are embracing this transformative technology, specifically Large Language ****** (LLMs), so that we can better keep people safe online.

You can download the full report over here as a PDF.

Forum discussion at X and WebmasterWorld.