ADEX: AI Involved in 52% of Detected Ad Fraud Schemes, Shopping Agents Could Be Next

New ADEX research examines how AI is making familiar advertising scams cheaper to produce and faster to scale, while warning that AI shopping assistants could become future targets.

LIMASSOL, Cyprus, October 27, 2026: AI played a significant role in 52% of advertising fraud schemes identified by ADEX between January and September 2026, according to the company’s State of Ad Fraud 2026: ADEX Trust & Safety Report.

The findings draw on aggregated moderation and verification data from eight advertising platforms using ADEX, covering 1.2 million campaigns and 4.9 million creatives. The 52% figure refers to distinct fraud schemes identified in that dataset, rather than individual campaigns, accounts, or the advertising market as a whole.

Key Findings from the ADEX Report

• 52% of detected fraud schemes involved AI in a significant role.
• 64% of AI-involved schemes featured bots impersonating humans.
• 53% of AI-involved schemes included cloned brands or fake endorsements.
• 11% of AI-involved schemes used deepfakes.
• Rejected fraudulent campaigns returned within hours in some observed cases, using revised advertising materials.

The technique categories overlap because individual fraud schemes can combine several AI-powered methods. ADEX does not report a standard turnaround time for revised campaigns, as this varies considerably between schemes.

Familiar Scams, More Convincing Execution

A fake investment campaign a few years ago might have relied on a hastily assembled landing page, a celebrity photograph, and a fabricated quote. A small team would then move potential victims into private conversations.

According to ADEX, AI can now help produce polished imitations of legitimate news outlets or financial institutions. Multilingual chatbots can sustain conversations around the clock, making fraudulent operations easier to scale and harder for users to recognize.

“The scheme itself has not changed in years: borrow a trusted face, promise big returns, move the victim into a private chat. What AI changed is the finish. The page looks real, the video looks real, and the person in the chat never sleeps and never makes a typo,” said Sergey Martianov, Chief Product Officer at ADEX.

The report describes brand cloning and fake endorsements across investment and blockchain scams, as well as fraudulent e-commerce stores. Attackers also imitate familiar technology brands to distribute fake security alerts.

AI is accelerating the replacement of fraudulent advertising materials, too. ADEX researchers observed rejected campaigns returning with revised content within hours, sometimes on the same day. This creates a faster cycle of production, rejection, and resubmission for moderation teams to address.

AI Shopping Agents Could Become the Next Target

As consumers delegate browsing, product comparisons, and purchases to AI assistants, ADEX expects fraudsters to adapt their tactics to influence those automated decisions.

One potential technique is prompt injection: placing malicious instructions inside content an AI agent encounters while carrying out a legitimate task.

According to ADEX, these instructions could appear in invisible page elements, metadata, product images, or text addressed directly to AI assistants. Attackers could also show different content to human visitors and AI agents, adapting cloaking techniques already used to evade advertising moderation.

The shopping-agent threat is a forward-looking prediction for 2027, not an attack category currently measured in ADEX’s moderation dataset. The company distinguishes this forecast from its observed 2026 findings on AI involvement in advertising fraud.

ADEX notes that prompt-injection techniques have already been documented in security research and that the company has previously examined how AI agents can be manipulated into delivering malicious content.

“In 2027, the most valuable user on the web may not be a person at all. If an agent is doing the shopping, someone will try to scam the agent. The industry needs to start checking ads for what they say to machines, too,” Martianov said.

When a Bot Is Also a Legitimate Customer

The expected growth of AI shopping agents introduces another challenge for advertisers and platforms: distinguishing authorized automated activity from malicious bots.

An assistant comparing prices or completing a purchase for a real customer can represent legitimate activity, even when no person directly visits the website.

Rather than relying only on whether traffic comes from a bot or a human, ADEX suggests assessing three questions:

• Identity: Can the visitor prove who it is?
• Behavior: Does its activity match its stated task?
• Outcome: Do its sessions lead to meaningful actions, such as a purchase or booking?

The company also recommends watching for websites that present different content to AI agents and human visitors.

What Advertisers Should Watch

ADEX highlights several practical priorities for advertisers:

• Monitor how your brand appears in advertisements published by others.
• Check where advertising clicks ultimately lead.
• Ask technology partners how they distinguish legitimate AI agents from malicious automation.
• Pay attention to content designed to influence machines as well as human audiences.

With AI increasingly involved on both sides of an advertising transaction, understanding who or what is making a decision, and which content influenced it, becomes an important part of traffic-quality assessment.

Research Methodology

The State of Ad Fraud 2026 report analyzes aggregated moderation and verification data from eight advertising platforms using ADEX between January and September 2026. The dataset covers 1.2 million campaigns and 4.9 million creatives.

AI involvement is calculated across distinct fraud schemes, rather than individual campaigns or accounts. The reported categories may overlap because a single scheme can use multiple techniques.

The findings describe activity identified within the participating platforms. Predictions about attacks on AI shopping agents in 2027 are presented separately from the measured results.

Read the State of Ad Fraud 2026: ADEX Trust & Safety Report.

About ADEX

ADEX is a global anti-fraud and traffic-quality platform within AdTech Holding. The company analyzes billions of impressions, clicks, and conversions to help protect AdTech products and partners from malware-driven and invalid traffic attacks.

Sponsored press release provided by ADEX, with light editorial adaptation by GCS Network.