Our big wins in 2024, and what’s coming in 2025

Celebrating everything we accomplished together 

First, to our community: thank you.

You sent us tips that informed our investigations. You made our campaigns go viral. You sent us kind messages of support along the way.

Thank you for being part of our mission to fix the internet.

We couldn’t do this work without you.

2024 was a HUGE year for Check My Ads.

In 2023, we exposed how the rapid rise of generative AI was going to make online spam and scams that much more common. To create and sustain a fair internet, it isn’t enough to focus on individual websites. We must fix the problem at the source: the digital advertising ecosystem that makes spam and and scams profitable, while stealing from real publishers and advertisers.

So, we’ve adapted. Now, we’re not just treating the symptoms of the broken internet. We’re curing the disease.

Here are some of our major wins from this past year.

🧑‍⚖️ Reported from Google’s adtech monopoly trial and created valuable resources for journalists covering it.

In 2024, the biggest adtech middleman of them all was on trial: Google. We built a coalition of 14 partner organizations and reported out from the courtroom daily. Our coverage and our resources served as a source of truth for journalists, advertisers, publishers, and civil society.

This work supported publishers pursuing private litigation, and helped inform inquiries by government enforcement agencies into financial crimes and anticompetitive conduct by Google and other adtech companies.

Our friends over at Digital Content Next had this to say:

"Check My Ads has been indispensable in covering the US v. Google trial, expertly unpacking complex documents and connecting the dots within the highly technical ad supply chain. Their analysis not only illuminates how these systems impact the funding of a free and plural media but also underscores the broader implications for democracy. Their work ensures that stakeholders understand the stakes and the urgent need for transparency in the digital advertising ecosystem." – Jason Kint, CEO, Digital Content Next

We even got a shoutout in a 2022 Google ads safety document, proving yet again that with your help, our “pushing” is working.

🔨 Pushed Google to crack open the opaque box that is Google’s Performance Max, giving advertisers some transparency.

With your help during our Google Search Partners campaign early this year, and our ongoing work to educate advertisers, we created the conditions that led to Google’s introduction of three changes to its AI product, PMax, that give advertisers transparency into where their ads are running. And, our work didn’t just help advertisers. Together, we also forced Google to crack down on scammers selling fake Shark Tank weight loss supplements through its ad products.

🤖 Removed harmful AI obituary spam

Content warning: This report discusses suicide.

Every dollar that funds clickbait, spam, or fraud, is a dollar that doesn’t make it to legitimate publishers. And some of that spam is especially harmful. We found adtech companies profiting off of fake obituaries created to drive traffic at the expense of grieving loved ones. Following our investigation into this AI-generated obituary spam, these websites scrubbed these spam obits from their sites entirely. And, this work had a lasting impact: one ad exchange changed their policy in response to our work, showing the potential for us to start a race to the top.

“We consider AI/spam obituaries to fall in this category and plan to add specific language to our Supply Policy in order to better clarify this — however, we do think our current wordage does cover this issue” – VP of Comms, TripleLift

You can bet we’ll be following up with the rest of them next year.

🏛️ We didn’t just move the industry. We shaped policy around the world.

We went even further upstream, working directly with policymakers and our civil society peers to shape policy and forge a durable path forward. We contributed to the United Nation’s Global Principles for Information Integrity, and the UN listened! The code contains our suggestions for more transparency for advertisers to know where their ad dollars are going and what content is being supported.

“At a time when billions of people are exposed to false narratives, distortions and lies, these principles lay out a clear path forward, firmly rooted in human rights, including the rights to freedom of expression and opinion” – UN Secretary-General António Guterres

We briefed members of the Italian Parliament on the need for oversight of the digital ad industry, globally. We kept that momentum going, launching a campaign  with our partner, Friends of Canadian Media calling for legislation that restores transparency and accountability to our online spaces and makes them safer for everyone.

Looking Ahead

2025 is going to be an even bigger year for making a fair internet for people, advertisers, and publishers. 

On the research front, we’ll be supercharging our work with advertisers, continuing to unpack the myths that keep them wasting money on useless data, to reach bots on spammy websites, while publishers struggle to stay afloat. We’ll be deep-diving into the dodgy, inaccurate personal data peddled by adtech companies and data brokers that advertisers rely on.

On the policy side, we’ll be working with lawmakers to draft model laws to hold the adtech industry accountable to advertisers, publishers, and the publics they serve.

And we’ll continue to rely on you, our community, to push for real change.

There’s a lot of work to do, and we’ll be using this holiday break to rest and recharge — or lift things that are way too heavy

Above: Our director of intelligence, deadlifting in Minion socks

Until then, we’re wishing you a wonderful holiday season, and a happy, healthy New Year.

Warm wishes,

The Check My Ads Team

✨ P.S. if you feel inclined to extend some holiday cheer, you can become an official member of this community as a Checkmate here. ✨

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