Ad Fraud May Kill the Open Web Before AI

Thank you for your response. It’s reassuring to know that, despite storing an estimated 50-100 exabytes of data on everything from search histories to advertising metrics, you somehow can’t track down the fraudulent ad I reported. Impressive. Truly.
From Martin Belak on LinkedIn

Q4 is always wild, because there are a lot of broken creatives and campaigns due to the general pressure. It’s also the most lucrative season for ad fraud and scam ads. It’s part of the business and I get that. However, this year feels different. We are seeing persistent issues not only on our own properties but also on major platforms – like Google. 

In a genius stroke fraudsters gathered Google Ads credentials to fuel even more fraudulent campaigns. The technique is not new and was tested with fraud ebay campaigns just two months earlier on Google Search Ads. 

Google claims to uphold  high standards for its own properties, yet we see questionable practices even there. Take YouTube, for example: since the start of the year, display ads for AI-driven sex apps have been running. After some backlash, YouTube at least introduced a countdown before these ads appear:

Yes. I know that those ads are personalized. My YouTube history is filled with tech YouTubers (Primeagen, Theo, and others), moderated StarCraft replays (Protoss player!), food content and Arcane music videos. Somehow, YouTube infers that I’m a single, male nerd that needs an AI girlfriend. 

And the stories keep coming

Hackers are once again abusing Google ads to spread malware, using a fake Homebrew website to infect Macs and Linux devices with an infostealer that steals credentials, browser data, and cryptocurrency wallets.

Reported by bleeping computers. 

On December 15, we detected a malicious campaign targeting Kaiser Permanente employees via Google Search Ads. The fraudulent ad masquerades as the health care company’s HR portal used to check for benefits, download paystubs and other corporate related tasks.

Reported by malwarebytes

There’s even a movie, which I haven’t seen yet, that allegedly demonstrates how easy it is to start up an ad fraud business. And of course the infamous honey scam!

The Why

The short answer: money.

There’s no money to be made by removing ad fraud – only financial losses for those who are already making too much. It’s the same reason Meta was so eager to scale back moderation and loosen platform policies. Mark Zuckerberg doesn’t care about free speech or so-called “censorship” (which is really just moderation). It’s about cutting costs and maximizing engagement. Meta doesn’t take responsibility for the content on their platforms, just as Google turns a blind eye to fraudulent ads.

And because both, and the other walled gardens are inevitable for users and marketers, there’s no real economical pressure from either side to drive change. Instead, Google is putting on the pressure, by blocking ad blocker users and rolling out Manifest v3 for extensions, which ultimately takes away many essential features for ad blockers.

I want to note here that I’m very proud to work for gutefrage.net, which has made a tremendous effort to implement DSA. This builds on our already excellent moderation system to be more transparent and standardized. In my humble opinion this is a required foundation for sustainable ad inventory. If I were an advertiser, I certainly wouldn’t want my ads appearing near to the toxic content that floods Meta, X, TikTok, and what not.

The Consequences

Tolerated ad fraud, the crackdown, zero accountability, and no fear of consequences – the only logical response for users is to block ads by any means necessary. Dustin Cha from Ad Shield highlights some interesting statistics, such as the rising adoption of the Brave browser and the increasing installation rates of uBlock Origin. Government institutions and researchers are also becoming a lot more vocal about installing ad blockers, due to security concerns – and they’re right. But Google, Meta and co don’t care, because in the end, it’s smaller publishers that bear the cost. eThe lack the resources to recover lost revenue, whether through ad block mitigation strategies or paid subscription models.

As a result, users will continue to be bombarded with scam, malware, and fraud ads on walled gardens, while smaller publishers will be forced to shut down as their monetizable traffic shrinks to unsustainable levels. It feels that this is destroying revenue even faster than GenAI tools that scrape publisher content and keep users away from their pages.

Meanwhile, the last remaining users without an ad blocker of some sort will be subjected to an ever-increasing flood of ads, as publishers desperately try to squeeze value from the last monetizable visitors they have left. 

When the Last Tree Is Cut Down, the Last Fish Eaten, and the Last Stream Poisoned, You Will Realize That You Cannot Eat Money (Chief Seattle’s Speech)

So will big tech companies realize, once the last publisher is bankrupted and the last user has deinstalled their app, they will realize that you cannot make money with porn ads shown to bots. Light is the best disinfectant, which is why we should all support IAB efforts for more transparency and take part in the Prebid ecosystem that is build on fair and transparent competition.