What is Malvertising?
Malvertising exploits the trust users place in advertising platforms and search results. Attackers bid on branded keywords, register lookalike domains, and create ads that appear legitimate while directing clicks to phishing pages or malware downloads.
Modern malvertising has evolved beyond banner ads on questionable websites to occupy premium positions in search results—appearing above organic listings on Google, Bing, and within AI chat interfaces. Forced redirects dominate current attack patterns, automatically sending users to malicious destinations the moment they click an ad without requiring additional interaction. Attackers employ cloaking techniques that show different content to security scanners than to real users, use residential proxies to appear as legitimate businesses, and rotate infrastructure continuously to evade detection. Some campaigns persist for weeks through this constant rotation. The emergence of “malvertising as a service” enables less technical criminals to purchase ad placement capabilities from operators who specialize in evading platform detection.
Business Impact
Malvertising creates a particularly insidious form of brand impersonation
because attacks occur in channels customers actively use to find legitimate businesses. Google
blocked 5.1 billion harmful ads in 2024 and suspended 39.2 million advertiser accounts, yet
malvertising increased 10% year-over-year. Organizations face brand damage when customers
are victimized through ads impersonating their products, difficulty detecting impersonation in
advertising channels separate from traditional brand monitoring, and the challenge of
competing for visibility against attackers willing to bid aggressively on branded keywords.
Mobile users are especially vulnerable—56% of malicious ad traffic targets mobile devices
where smaller screens make URL inspection difficult. Over 70% of users now view online ads as
untrustworthy, eroding the effectiveness of legitimate advertising investments. Enterprise
environments face particular risk through Bing integration in Microsoft products, where
ransomware groups like Rhysida have purchased ads targeting employees searching for tools
like Microsoft Teams