By James Hercher
Publication Date: 2025-12-03 12:25:00
Agency buyers who manage portfolios of Google Ads and Merchant Center accounts are being targeted by sophisticated scam artists who hijack those accounts, drain client funds and sometimes lock out admins for weeks or even months.
That’s according to three ad buyers who spoke with AdExchanger anonymously for fear of potential reprisals by Google.
This problem isn’t exactly new, though.
The three agency execs who spoke with AdExchanger each had their accounts taken over between August and October. But similar fraudsters have been active since at least late last year, when cybersecurity business Malwarebytes first documented the issue and when an entirely different set of advertisers told AdExchanger they had suffered from account lockout attacks.
Last year, the attack vector came via fraudulent Google Search links. It’s a common practice – albeit a bad one – that people will type snippets like “Google…