Three-quarters of leading brands in the US and UK have been reported to be victims of identity theft in Google search ads.
The consequences range from financial losses for the targeted business to customers falling victim to fraud, according to a new report from search marketing security firm Marcode.
How it works. Fraudsters trick consumers by impersonating the target brand’s domain and ad copy. They intentionally pay for ad placements that appear when users search for these brands.
Here’s an example of a fraudulent ad impersonating flight comparison company Skyscanner:
Making the target brand worse, due to Google’s policy of serving only one ad per domain, the legitimate brand’s ad is excluded from search results when these scammers manage to secure an ad slot.
Undetected Brands often don’t know they’ve been a victim of fraud, as the problem tends to go undetected due to the limitations of Google’s internal reporting tools.
Why we care If customers fall victim to fraud using your brand name, it could seriously damage your company’s reputation. People may hesitate to make future purchases for fear of being scammed. Also, if your business relies heavily on Google Ads, these scams could limit the reach of your campaign, resulting in fewer leads and a lower return on investment (ROI).
Fishing scams An example of a phishing scam ad can be seen below:
When users click on what appears to be a genuine ad, they are directed through a series of hidden redirects without the user’s knowledge.
The end result is a fake website that invites users to join a game, promising a voucher that can be used at the destination store, as shown below:
Predictably, the user consistently “wins” this game, only to be redirected once again to another site where they are asked to provide personal information.
A Marcode spokesperson commented:
“We are aware that several complaints about these issues were made to Google, as we have worked with some of the affected brands.” “Interestingly, during the period of creating this report, we noticed a significant decrease in the frequency of these scams in the US and the UK.” “However, these bad actor accounts changed their focus to target Germany, although they appeared to be exiting the US and UK markets.”
affiliate scams. Affiliate hijacking was found to be more common than fraud, affecting 75% of the sites in the study.
In a hijacked ad scenario, the user is directed to the brand’s website with an affiliate code attached. This causes the brand, like Dyson in the case below, to pay a commission to the hijacker for any sales generated from that click.
A Marcode spokesperson commented:
“While affiliate marketing has its advantages, a key problem lies in the presence of bad actors within these networks.” “It’s a brand’s decision to engage in affiliate marketing, but networks need to improve their verification processes.” “Our focus here is how these bad actors manage to stay hidden and the potential negative impact that has on brands.”
Key findings. The researchers who conducted the report found that retail giants such as Amazon, American Airlines, Lego, Pizza Hut and Samsung were victims of identity fraud in Google Search Ads. Additional findings include:
Of the 120 brands monitored, 90 suffered some type of seizure. Over a 90-day period, the researchers detected persistent phishing scams across 20 brands from a group of six ad accounts. Affiliate hijacking affects up to 67% of brand search traffic for the most affected brands. Some Google Comparison Shopping Services (CSS) are misused to generate e-commerce traffic that has been hijacked by affiliates.
What Google says. A Google spokesperson did not immediately respond to Search Engine Land’s request for comment.
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deep dive Read our guide on how to detect and address user data leaks to learn more about data protection and privacy protection.
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