Ad tech data service DecryptAds, operated by Svart Works Inc., says it found about 400 recipe websites whose named owners and chefs appear to be AI-generated images, edited photos of real people or stock models. Using withheld technical fingerprints, it expanded that to more than 2,100 related made-for-advertising domains. The report, dated October 18, 2026, and announced by threat researcher Zach Edwards on October 20, says ads from Adobe, HBO Max, Siemens, Subaru, Capital One, Pepsi and Sam's Club ran on these sites, PPC Land reports.
According to the report, HBagency and Ezoic manage the ads.txt files for 96.3% of the tracked domains. DecryptAds lists 296 geo-risk ad systems, including 81 in Russia and 85 in China, and says authorized systems can receive visitor IP, device and page data when a page loads. On the one site it itemized, 9 of 153 partners were flagged, and four were Turkish while three were Russian or Chinese.
PPC Land notes the report includes no spend or impression data, does not show how the ads were bought, and has no response from any named company. DecryptAds sells access to the underlying data. Edwards said sales houses could require AI persona disclosure as part of their customer checks. Separately, TAG, the ANA and Fiducia earlier estimated AI slop at 1.3% to 2.4% of open web programmatic spend in Q1 2026.