Scam ads have existed on YouTube for a long time. Scammers will inevitably take advantage of any platform where you can pay to show an ad to a large number of people. The existence of these scams is not surprising to me, however the amount of these scams I have seen recently is shockingly high.

I recently started noticing just how many of the ads I see are clearly scams. I would estimate these scam ads make up around 25% of all the ads I see, possibly more. This is just ridiculous. There are way too many scam ads on a platform as big as YouTube.

Here’s what a typical scam ad looks like:

A lot of people in [COUNTRY] have [COMMON PROBLEM] and don’t know about this incredible product. Thanks to [INSERT PRODUCT NAME WHICH CHANGES EVERY TIME], you never have to worry about [PROBLEM] again. This product does [IMPOSSIBLE TASK] in [VERY SHORT AMOUNT OF TIME].

This product was made by two people from [REPUTABLE ACADEMIC INSTITUTION] and created this product that does [SOMETHING VIOLATING LAWS OF PHYSICS]. They were kicked out of [ACADEMIC INSTITUTION] and they started a business selling [PRODUCT] which made [LARGE AMOUNT OF MONEY]. This product can only be bought on [SHADY WEB STORE] and cannot be bought anywhere else. For people viewing this, they are offering a [RANDOM NUMBER]% discount. Click the link to get [DIFFERENT RANDOM NUMBER]% off your purchase.

Here are some examples of products I have seen in scam ads:

  • Tiny heater that heats your room in 10 minutes using almost no electricity
  • Hose attachment that turns regular garden hose into extremely powerful pressure washer
  • Smartwatch that costs way too little for the features it claims to have
  • Robot dog which looks and behaves exactly like real dog (with Christmas music in the ad’s background for some reason)
  • Magic box that plugs into power outlet and speeds up your WiFi somehow

If you click the ad, you get to a website whose main purpose is to make you buy the product quickly. The website often has a countdown timer claiming the arbitrary discount will expire after some time. The discount never expires and the timer often resets when you refresh the page. They also often feature AI generated reviews and random technical jargon like “payments secured by 256 bit SSL encryption” (may or may not be accurate but not useful to customer). They also often contain fake 5 star Trustpilot reviews even though the actual reviews are usually 1 or 2 stars.

The website and product name change all the time, likely due to people talking about these products being scams and reporting them.

If you buy one of these products, you usually get something in the same category as the product, but with way less features than advertised e.g. you may get a regular hose attachment which slightly increases the pressure.

You might wonder why I am so concerned by this, given that I can usually identify these quite easily. The problem is that not everyone can easily tell these apart, and anyone could be fooled by these products if they are tired or occupied by other things. If the scam exists, it means it works on someone. I am seeing a lot of these scams, which means other YouTube users might be seeing many of these as well, and some of these users might buy the product.

To defend against these scams, I would recommend always being sceptical of any advertised product and verifying claims made in the ad. Personally, I would suggest never buying anything exclusively based on an ad (on YouTube or anywhere else).

Ultimately, I think YouTube should invest more effort into checking whether or not an advert is a blatant scam rather than just taking money from any company that gives it to them. I usually press the ‘report ad’ button when I see these ads but I highly doubt someone actually looks at my reports.

If people get scammed from YouTube ads often, many people won’t trust the platform and will use it less, so filtering out scams should be in YouTube’s best interests to keep a good reputation.

Do better, YouTube.

For more information about scams like this, check out this video by Atomic Shrimp