Google Removes 175.5M Ads in South Korea Using AI Enforcement, Suspends 326K Advertiser Accounts

Gate News message, April 17 — Google removed 175.5 million ads that violated its policies in South Korea during 2025, leveraging its AI model Gemini to strengthen enforcement. The company said more than 99% of offending ads were blocked before reaching users.

Google also suspended 326,000 advertiser accounts in South Korea, with copyright infringement identified as the leading violation category. Globally, Google reported blocking or removing over 8.3 billion ads in 2024 and suspending 24.9 million advertiser accounts.

South Korea's Personal Information Protection Commission fined Google 69.2 billion won (approximately $50 million) in 2025 for tracking online behavior for targeted advertising without proper user consent. The regulator noted that over 82% of South Korean Google users had permitted such tracking, raising privacy concerns. In 2021, South Korea had previously fined Google $177 million for abusing market dominance in the Android operating system market.

Google's shift toward AI-driven ad-by-ad enforcement has reduced erroneous advertiser account suspensions by 80%, according to the company. Experts describe this approach as part of an escalating arms race, as AI-powered defenses increasingly match the scale and sophistication of AI-generated scams and violations.