Scammers are getting smarter, but so is Google. The tech giant announced in its 2025 Ads Safety Report that its Gemini artificial intelligence platform helped block or remove more than 8.3 billion malicious ads last year — stopping over 99% of policy-violating content before it ever reached a single user.
This marks a significant milestone in the escalating battle between digital advertisers and bad actors who are increasingly using generative AI to run sophisticated scams at scale. Google’s report signals that AI is no longer just the weapon of choice for fraudsters — it’s now the primary line of defense against them.
How Scammers Are Using AI
The rise of accessible generative AI tools has fueled a surge in deceptive online advertising. Cybercriminals are using these tools to rapidly produce convincing fake ads that impersonate well-known businesses and government agencies, deploy malware, promote fraudulent products, and drain visitors’ cryptocurrency wallets. Some campaigns use cloaking techniques and URL redirects to make harmful sites appear trustworthy.
In some cases, fake ads have impersonated popular software tools, financial platforms, and even Google’s own services. The speed and scale at which scammers can now operate — thanks to AI — has dramatically raised the stakes for platforms like Google Ads.
Gemini’s Role in Fighting Back
To counter this threat, Google has embedded its Gemini AI into its ad enforcement systems, and the results are striking. Unlike older detection systems that primarily relied on keyword matching and rule-based filtering, Gemini analyzes hundreds of billions of signals — including account age, behavioral patterns, and campaign history — to understand the intent behind an ad.
“Bad actors are using generative AI to create deceptive ads at scale, and Gemini helps us detect and block them in real time,” said Keerat Sharma, VP and General Manager of Ads Privacy and Safety at Google. By the end of 2025, the majority of Responsive Search Ads were being reviewed instantly at the point of submission, with harmful content blocked before it ever launched.
The Numbers Behind the Crackdown
The scale of Google’s enforcement effort in 2025 is hard to ignore:
- 8.3 billion ads were blocked or removed globally
- 602 million of those ads were tied specifically to scam-related policy violations
- 24.9 million advertiser accounts were suspended
- 4 million accounts were flagged for scam-linked activity
- 4.8 billion ads were restricted
- 480 million web pages were blocked or restricted
- Over 245,000 publisher sites were actioned
- Google made 35 policy updates throughout the year
In the United States alone, Google removed 1.7 billion ads and suspended 3.3 million advertiser accounts. The most common violations included abusing the ad network and misrepresentation.
India Emerges as a Key Battleground
India proved to be a major front in the global ad safety fight. Google’s AI blocked or removed 483.7 million policy-violating ads in the country during 2025. Additionally, 1.7 million advertiser accounts in India were suspended for failing to meet safety standards.
To strengthen protections further, Google has expanded its advertiser verification program in India, requiring businesses to confirm their identities before their ads can reach Indian consumers.
Fewer False Alarms, Faster Response
One of Gemini’s most important contributions has been improving accuracy — not just catching more bad actors, but reducing errors that hurt legitimate advertisers. Google reported that its AI-powered systems led to an 80% reduction in incorrect advertiser suspensions compared to previous years.
The system has also made the human review process significantly faster. Gemini helped Google’s teams process four times as many user reports in 2025 than they did the year before. When a harmful ad does slip through, the company says it can now neutralize the threat much more quickly — freeing up human safety experts to focus on complex cases that require deeper judgment.
What’s Next for Ad Safety
Google has made clear that this is just the beginning. The company plans to expand Gemini’s real-time review capability to additional ad formats beyond Responsive Search Ads in 2026. The goal is to catch and block harmful campaigns at the moment of submission across the board.
Google’s 2025 Ads Safety Report frames this as an ongoing arms race — one where both sides are using the same AI tools, but Google is betting its scale and continuous model improvements will keep it a step ahead. For users scrolling through search results and websites, the promise is a cleaner, safer advertising environment, with fewer fake remedies, bogus tech support alerts, and impersonation scams making it through the filter.
