Nairobi, April 6 -- Tech giant Google last year blocked a record 5.5 billion advertisements on its platforms, a result of improved vigilance and a signal of growing misuse of online advertising across the globe.

In its Ads Safety Report published last week, Google said the number of blocked advertisements and advertiser accounts nearly doubled last year, hitting a record high.

This means that over the year, Google blocked an average of 15 million advertisements each day, and about 627,000 'bad' ads every hour, an indication that advertisers are increasingly becoming 'rogue.'

At the same time, over 12.7 million advertiser accounts were suspended, preventing their owners from posting any more advertisements on Google and its various plat...