FTC asks whether ad platforms should bear more responsibility for impersonation scams

The Federal Trade Commission is asking whether the companies that sell and optimize online ads should do more to keep government and business impersonators from reaching consumers. Its September 24 advance notice seeks evidence about search engines, social networks and other digital marketplaces. It opens a question about possible rulemaking; it does not itself impose a new duty on an ad platform.

The distinction matters because the FTC already has a rule against impersonating governments and businesses. That rule addresses the impersonation. The new notice says it does not expressly address a platform's separate conduct when its tools help create, target or optimize an ad that impersonates someone else. The Commission is asking whether to amend the existing rule, write another rule or use a different response.

The ad system is part of the question

The notice's questions move beyond whether a fraudulent advertiser can be identified after a victim complains. They ask how platforms check an advertiser before granting access, whether they inspect the advertiser's destination site, how they handle names and symbols of unaffiliated businesses or agencies, whether they screen ads before or after publication, and what happens when a complaint identifies a suspected impersonator. The FTC also asks whether revenue from such ads affects those decisions.

That is an inquiry into incentives as well as detection. A platform may be paid to improve an ad's reach, while the person who loses money and the organization whose name is misused bear much of the harm. The FTC presents that mismatch as a reason to investigate platform practices. The notice does not establish that any particular platform committed an unfair or deceptive act, or that every optimization tool promotes fraud.

The agency cites large losses, but they have to be read with their boundaries intact. Its 2025 data record more than one million reports about imposter scams and nearly $3.5 billion in reported losses. Those scams reached people through phone calls, texts, email, search results, social media and other channels. The $3.5 billion is not an estimate of losses caused by online ads alone. Separately, the FTC says nearly 30% of consumers who reported losing money to a scam in 2025 reported first contact on social media, with $2.1 billion in reported losses across scam types. Those figures describe different groups and cannot be added to calculate the cost of impersonation ads.

What happens next

The FTC is seeking evidence about both possible safeguards and their costs: advertiser verification, ad screening, investigations, takedowns and restrictions on repeat offenders. Its announcement says comments will be due 60 days after the advance notice is published in the Federal Register. The September 24 materials do not give a fixed calendar deadline. After comments, the Commission would still have to decide whether and how to propose a rule.

For readers and advertisers, the useful test is more specific than a promise to “fight scams”: can a platform show when it verifies a claimed identity, what it blocks before an ad runs, how quickly it handles a substantiated complaint, and whether its payment incentives undermine those controls? The FTC is asking for evidence that could answer those questions. It has not answered them for the industry yet.