Phantom Stores: Retail Impersonation Spreads Ahead of Black Friday Powered by Video Ads and Modular ‘Holiday Skins’ Kit
In the frenzied weeks leading up to Black Friday and Cyber Monday, Ad Tech’s busiest season, a new cluster of phantom storefronts has surged into view. While trademark abuse and counterfeit retail are cyclical seasonal holiday threats, this year brings a heavy pivot to short-form, “TikTok-style” video ads to drive traffic combined with resilient infrastructure.
Timing the Abuse of the Ad Ecosystem
This cluster is capitalizing on the current ‘search and discovery’ phase of the shopping cycle. It is aggressively targeting high-demand gifting items like laptops, luxury apparel, and home appliances, alongside seasonal staples like Christmas trees, lights and holiday chocolate. It is timed specifically to coincide with legitimate ‘Early Black Friday’ and holiday sales events, and notably going with video ads rather than static ads. Trademarks of dozens of major brands are abused, in particular giants Amazon, Costco, Walmart and Home Depot.
From a revenue perspective, Q4 is critical in Ad Tech. Ad Tech companies generate a significant portion of their annual profits during this window, while advertisers aggressively deploy their remaining budgets.
Consequently, Ad Operations teams operate at maximum capacity, managing a significant increase in campaigns for Black Friday and Cyber Monday events. They face pressure to approve and launch campaigns rapidly. Ad Operations teams treat “high-CPM” brands like the ones we saw abused with care during Q4 because of their impact on revenue and driving spend. In this high-velocity environment, mimicking high-CPM brands can be quite effective. Additionally, video ads are time-consuming to review and historically perceived as safe, often giving them a degree of implicit trust from reviewers.
Attackers try to exploit this operational strain, attempting to slip a steady stream of malicious campaigns through amidst th
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