Malvertising

Malvertising (malicious advertising) is the use of paid online ads to lead people to phishing sites, investment scams or malware. The ads often impersonate a well-known brand and appear in search results, on social media or on ordinary websites, which gives them a borrowed sense of legitimacy.

How it works

Attackers buy ads through legitimate ad platforms, sometimes using hijacked or newly created advertiser accounts. Common patterns include:

• search ads for a brand name that appear above the brand's real website;
• social media ads using a brand's logo, a celebrity's face or a deepfake video to promote a fake product or investment;
• display ads on news or download sites that redirect to a fake software installer.

To get past the platform's review, the landing page often uses cloaking: reviewers see a harmless page, while targeted users are redirected to the scam. Campaigns tend to be short-lived and rotate through many domains and advertiser accounts.

Example

As an illustration, someone searches for their bank's name and clicks the first sponsored result. The ad shows the bank's name and a plausible display URL, but the click passes through a redirect and lands on examplebank-online[.]com, a copy of the login page. In a second variation, a social media ad uses a news-style story with a public figure's photo to promote a "bank-backed" investment platform that does not exist.

How to spot it

• Sponsored results for your brand name that do not lead to your site.
• Ads using your logo or executives' images that you did not run.
• Landing pages that change depending on device, country or referrer.
• Advertiser names that do not match the brand shown in the ad.
• Customer complaints mentioning "the ad I clicked".

What brands can do

Monitor search and social ads for your brand terms, and keep screenshots, ad IDs, advertiser names and landing URLs. Report the ad through the platform's own reporting channel and, separately, report the landing page to its host, registrar and blocklists, because removing the ad alone leaves the site live. Trademark complaint routes at ad platforms can help stop repeat use of your brand. Phishvoid verifies and reports the landing sites behind these campaigns; contact us if fake ads are using your name.

Read more: Fake Ads and Deepfake Investment Scams Using Your Brand