Ad Fraud stories

Cloaking dominates PropellerAds’ 2025 safety report as stricter checks drive a 35% rise in blocked campaigns and more account suspensions.

DoubleVerify hires former Starcom executive Robert Millett to lead its first Melbourne office as it accelerates growth across Australia and APAC.

DoubleVerify flags surge in “zombie” Android app fraud as hijacked dormant accounts push bogus games that drain ad budgets and devices.

Online shopping scams in the UK jumped 416% in late 2025 as malvertising, social media fake shops and deepfake frauds surged, Gen warns.

PayPal-owned Honey is dropped by Rakuten’s ad network, cutting it off from 2,000 merchants amid claims of affiliate fraud and link theft.

Hydrolix launches Bot Insights to reveal hidden AI bot traffic and six-figure cost leaks, promising real-time visibility across CDNs.

VIOOH partners with Dolphin to offer programmatic access to over 5,000 US digital out-of-home screens, reaching 50m monthly impressions.

Unapproved peptide ads and listings have surged across online platforms since 2020, raising fresh concerns over consumer safety and oversight.

Integral Ad Science taps former LinkedIn leader Melissa Furze as Head of Data Science to steer an AI-first strategy in ad verification.

SHAREit launches AI-powered ad platform to tap emerging-market growth, handling 180 billion daily requests and 150 million impressions.

Integral Ad Science will roll out IAS Agent, an explainable AI assistant for ad measurement, to all platform users for free early next year.

Once harmless web clutter, parked domains now funnel over 90% of visitors to scams, malware and illegal content, Infoblox researchers warn.

AppsFlyer’s 2025 Index shows Meta, TikTok and others closing in on Google and Apple as mobile ad spend concentrates at the top.

Affiliate fraud is draining advertisers' budgets by hijacking attribution, risking $71 billion in losses by 2025 and undermining trust in affiliate marketing.

Vane Viper, a threat actor posing as an adtech firm, generated over 1 trillion DNS queries last year linked to malware and ad fraud, warns Infoblox.

VexTrio, unmasked as a multinational ad-fraud empire with nearly 100 companies, runs scams worth billions across adtech and beyond.

hCaptcha reveals up to 95% of traffic on residential proxy networks fuels cybercrime, exposing flaws in current online security measures.

Fastly reports a doubling of attacks on commerce sites, now 31% of threats, as unwanted bot traffic hits 37% of all internet activity in Q1 2025.

Australia leads APAC with top digital video ad engagement but faces rising ad fraud and brand safety risks, says Integral Ad Science report.

Google blocked over 5.1bn ads and suspended 39.2m accounts in 2024, using AI advancements to combat ad scams and protect consumers.