Does anyone screen these ads?

Monetization & Growth Unity Ads
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I am CONSTANTLY receiving ads via Unity Ads for “games” that are potentially fraudulent or harmful.

The typical modus for the scams is an ad depicting somebody apparently winning thousands via PayPal payouts or winning big on a scratch card followed by a link to the game in Google Play.

Of course no game is going to pay out cash so it begs the question if the “game” is a scam, a phishing app or something equally malicious.

Common traits of these ads

  • Promising massive payouts.
  • A common motif in ads is a Jester / Joker figure but not always. I assume at least one group is just remixing the same app.
  • The Play store description says nothing of cash payouts but may allude to “prizes”. In other words they are already being misleading, presumably to skirt store rules
  • App is marked in development to prevent reviews on Play -Or- app is stuffed with fake five star reviews to drown out legit ones.
  • PEGI 3 rated which seems slightly in violation to the gambling element

These apps have scam written all over them and Unity Ads is written underneath. Do you really want to be associated with this because it seems that somebody should be reviewing ad submissions a lot more carefully than at present.

1 Like
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Hi There,

Thanks for bringing this to our attention. We take our ad quality very seriously and follow all the applicable policies and guidelines. Please feel free to send us a message with specific details to unityads-support@unity3d.com with relevant screenshots of the ad and the “build info”. To access the build info, simply click the “hand” (privacy) icon in the lower corner, click “build info” and take a couple screenshots with all information provided.

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Thank you for informing on how to report ads like this:

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In Denmark, advertisements like those are illegal and imo it should be possible to report those ads as “fradulent” from the report menu without having to be a tech wiz. No ordinary user will have any idea on how to report them the “technical” way you describe.
I’ll let the reports flow in from now