Ad Transparency & Supply Chain
Website Cloned by Scammers? A Step-by-Step Response Plan
Evidence first, traffic second, takedowns third. The exact order of operations when scammers clone your site, with the levers that actually move fast.
ad fraud
Ad Transparency & Supply Chain
How Scam Ads Slip Past Review: Cloaking, Swaps & Weak Spots
Ad review is a snapshot; scam campaigns are moving targets. The four techniques scammers use to pass review — and the tells that expose them after approval.
Ad Transparency & Supply Chain
How to Detect Bot Clicks: Signals, Tools & Placement Forensics
You don't need a fraud vendor to catch most bot clicks — you need your tracker, your analytics and a placement-level report read the right way. Here is the full detection stack, from cheap signals to hard proof.
Ad Transparency & Supply Chain
How Much Native Traffic Is Bots? Fraud Rates by Network Tier
There is no single honest number for bot traffic in native advertising — it ranges from negligible to campaign-killing depending on where in the supply chain you buy. Here is how the risk actually distributes, and how to measure yours.
Ad Transparency & Supply Chain
Are Deepfake Ads Illegal? Laws Catching Up With AI Impersonation
There is no single 'deepfake ad law' — but a deepfake ad that fakes an endorsement almost always breaks several existing ones. Here is the actual legal landscape, jurisdiction by jurisdiction, and why enforcement still lags.
Ad Transparency & Supply Chain
Why You Keep Seeing Fake Celebrity Ads (And Who's Behind Them)
That ad claiming a TV host was arrested for revealing a money secret is not an accident of moderation — it is an industrialized fraud funnel. Here is who runs fake celebrity ads, how they beat review, and why they keep finding you.
Affiliate & Media Buying
Is Cloaking Illegal? Ad Network Rules, FTC Risk & the Honest Answer
Cloaking sits in a legal grey zone — but the deception it conceals usually doesn't. What the law actually says, why every ad network bans it, how it gets detected, and what the ban-cycle economics really look like.
Native Ad Networks
MGID Traffic Quality: How Much Is Real? (Testing Framework)
MGID traffic is mostly real humans — but placement quality varies wildly. The signals that expose junk widgets and the 7-step framework profitable buyers use to build whitelists.
Native Ad Networks
Is MGID Legit? Bots, Payouts & the Truth Behind the Reviews
MGID is a real, 18-year-old ad network — not a scam. But the reviews aren't wrong about variance. What the complaints actually describe, and the checklist that keeps your budget safe.
Native Ad Networks
Is Taboola Traffic Any Good? Quality, Bots & Conversion Reality
Taboola sends real human clicks from mainstream publisher sites — cold ones, with huge variance between placements. What quality actually means on the network, and how the buyers who stay profitable handle it.
Ad Transparency & Supply Chain
How to Report a Scam Ad (And Document the Evidence)
Reporting a scam ad rarely fails on intent, it fails on evidence, so here is the workflow that actually moves networks and regulators: what to capture, where to send it, and how to preserve the ad and its landing page before they disappear.
Ad Transparency & Supply Chain
Copycat Landing Pages: How Scammers Clone Brands in Native Ads
Copycat landing pages borrow a trusted brand's logo and tone to launder a scam through native-ad networks, and here is the practitioner's method for catching them with evidence anyone can verify.
Ad Transparency & Supply Chain
Ad Fraud in Native Advertising: Types & How to Spot It
Native ad fraud hides in the gap between the widget you see and the advertiser you don't, so here are the fraud types that matter and the supply-chain and landing-page signals that surface them.
Ad Transparency & Supply Chain
Brand Protection in Native Advertising: A Practical Guide
Native ad networks are where brand impersonation, copycat landing pages, and cloaked offers thrive, because the creative blends into the article and the real advertiser hides behind redirect chains; here is how to monitor, detect, document, and escalate brand abuse with evidence that holds up.
Ad-Tech Glossary
Ad Cloaking
Ad cloaking is a deceptive technique that shows ad reviewers a compliant page while serving real users a different, often non-compliant destination.
Ad-Tech Glossary
Brand Protection in Advertising
Brand protection in advertising is the practice of defending a brand against impersonation, trademark misuse, cloaked ads, and copycat campaigns.
Ad-Tech Glossary
sellers.json
sellers.json is a public file that exchanges and SSPs publish to reveal the sellers and intermediaries authorized to sell inventory through them.
Ad-Tech Glossary
ads.txt
ads.txt is a public file publishers host to declare exactly which companies are authorized to sell their ad inventory.
Ad-Tech Glossary
Click Fraud
Click fraud is the deliberate generation of fake or invalid ad clicks, by bots or humans, to drain budgets or earn illegitimate payouts.