Scam Ads Are A Brand Protection Problem
Scam ads are now a brand protection issue for paid media. Learn how advertisers should monitor impersonation risk across search, social, and landing pages.
Scam ads are no longer just a platform moderation problem. They are a brand protection problem for legitimate businesses that buy media, depend on search visibility, and need customers to trust what they see before they click.
On September 30, the Federal Trade Commission announced that it is considering whether to update its Rule on Impersonation of Government and Businesses to address how search engines, social platforms, and digital marketplaces may help impersonation scams spread through ad-optimization tools. The Federal Register notice, published October 1, asks for public comment on platform ad operations, advertiser vetting, scam-ad removal, and disciplinary action against bad advertisers.
That should get every marketing director’s attention. If customers see fake versions of real brands in paid placements, the damage does not stop with the scammer. It erodes trust in the whole click path.
Paid Media Trust Is Becoming Part Of Performance
Most paid media teams still treat fraud, impersonation, and brand safety as separate from performance. That separation is getting harder to defend.
The FTC said people reported losing $3.5 billion to imposter scams in 2025, with losses nearly tripling since 2020. In a separate update, the FTC said nearly 30% of people who reported losing money to a scam in 2025 said it started on social media, with reported losses reaching $2.1 billion.
Those numbers change the marketing conversation. A customer who has been trained to distrust sponsored results, social ads, fake giveaway pages, or lookalike booking portals is harder to convert even when your campaign is legitimate.
For local service companies, healthcare providers, ecommerce brands, and professional services firms, paid ads management now has to include a simple question: what else appears when someone searches for our brand, our offers, our products, or our executives?
Platforms Are Fighting Scams, But Brands Still Need Evidence
Google and Meta both publish large enforcement numbers, which shows the scale of the problem and the size of the cleanup effort.
Google’s 2025 Ads Safety Report says it blocked or removed 8.3 billion ads in 2025, and stopped more than 99% of those ads before anyone saw them. Meta said it removed over 159 million scam ads in 2025 and took down 10.9 million accounts on Facebook and Instagram associated with criminal scam centers.
Those efforts matter. They also prove that scam ads are not a fringe issue.
Brands should not wait for a customer complaint to discover impersonation risk. A practical audit can be done in one afternoon:
- Search your brand name, product names, executive names, and high-intent service terms in incognito mode.
- Check sponsored results, social placements, map results, shopping units, and common misspellings.
- Screenshot suspicious ads, URLs, advertiser names, landing pages, phone numbers, and checkout paths.
- Report confirmed impersonation through the platform and keep a dated record.
- Review whether your own ads, profiles, landing pages, and verification signals make the real brand easy to distinguish.
This is not only a legal or IT task. It belongs in marketing because marketing owns the trust layer before the lead or sale happens.
What Marketers Should Fix First
Start with your own footprint. Claim and maintain the profiles customers expect to see. Keep Google Business Profile information current. Use consistent brand names across ads, landing pages, social profiles, and checkout pages. Avoid ad copy that resembles scam patterns, including vague urgency, unrealistic discounts, unclear ownership, or landing pages that hide contact details.
Then add brand-protection checks to your normal paid media optimization rhythm. If you already review search terms, competitor ads, creative fatigue, and conversion quality, add impersonation checks to that same meeting. The work is small, but the downside is not.
For healthcare and high-trust services, this matters even more. People searching for treatment, financial help, legal help, home repairs, or medical services are often acting under pressure. A fake ad that copies a trusted provider can create consumer harm and reputational damage at the same time.
The Monday move is straightforward: run a brand SERP and social ad audit before your next budget decision. If the real business is not clearly distinguishable from suspicious ads, your next performance problem may not be targeting or bids. It may be trust.