Some of the world’s biggest brands – including Amazon, Kellogg’s and Toyota – have been the victims of an elaborate scam which inserts unauthorised ads into YouTube.
A London company, Spider.io, has discovered two programmes which placed ads on the Google-owned site when viewed by affected PCs. It said the plug-in had been promoted as a way of downloading videos from the site and claimed some directed users to malware.
The firm responsible for the scam has been named as California-based Sambreel, although one of its subsidiaries, Yontoo, told Forbes magazine: “The Best Video Downloader and Easy YouTube Downloader products have been discontinued.”
However, according to reports this only happened after Sambreel was alerted to Spider.io’s findings.
Some of the rogue ad slots had been sold on through exchanges to well-known brands including Amazon, Blackberry, Kellogg’s, Toyota and Snickers.
“When a user who has installed these plug-ins visits YouTube multiple display ad slots are injected across the YouTube homepage, channel pages, video pages and search results pages,” Spider.io said. “[One example] shows a fake alert, which suggests to the user that a Java update is required. If the user clicks the OK button, then the user is taken to the disreputable site.
“This sort of malvertising would be unlikely to impact YouTube users without Sambreel’s involvement. Google has strict ad-quality processes, and Sambreel’s plug-ins bypass these.”
Spider.io said it had identified 3.5 million installations of the YouTube-focused plug-ins but believed there could be many more.
Major brands fall victim to YouTube advertising scam http://t.co/EhVUbNQ1Gj #directmarketing #datamarketing #digitalmarketing
RT @DM_editor: Major brands fall victim to YouTube advertising scam http://t.co/EhVUbNQ1Gj #directmarketing #datamarketing #digitalmarketing