The IT Nerd

The Media Trust (TMT), a global leader in digital trust and safety for more than 20 years, today released its 2026 Intelligence Report, When Advertising Entered the Cyber Conversation: A Look Back at 2025 and the Digital Safety Imperative for 2026.

The report documents a defining shift in the digital ecosystem: in 2025, advertising infrastructure was no longer viewed solely as a revenue engine. It became increasingly recognized by regulators, media companies, and the public as part of the cyber risk landscape.

High-profile enforcement actions, evolving government policy initiatives, and increased scrutiny of platform accountability, including measures undertaken by major publishers and global technology companies, signal a clear shift. Neutrality is no longer viable. For publishers, platforms, and brands, ignoring malicious activity within advertising systems carries measurable consequences: reputational damage, regulatory exposure, lost revenue, and growing legal liability.

The question entering 2026 is not whether responsibility exists. It is how organizations will operationalize it.

Drawing on proprietary, real-time threat detection data from The Media Trust’s global infrastructure, which analyzes more than 200 billion ads monthly across 100,000+ digital properties, the report details how malvertising, malicious redirects, cloaked landing pages, and AI-enabled manipulation tactics are actively exploiting advertising systems as scalable attack surfaces.

TMT’s data shows these threats are not random. They concentrate geographically, target specific user communities, and follow monetization pathways designed to extract economic value at scale. Digital crime within the ad ecosystem is structured, repeatable, and increasingly automated.

Key Findings from the 2026 Intelligence Report

Advertising as Infrastructure


Advertising systems now operate as high-speed execution environments for third-party code, making them efficient pathways for malware, fraud, and surveillance when exploited.

AI is Accelerating Both Defense and Attack


Artificial intelligence is reshaping the threat landscape. Attackers are using AI to scale evasion and automate malicious campaigns, while real-time defensive AI has become essential to detecting and blocking harmful activity before it reaches users.

Digital Crime is Local


Threat activity is no longer diffuse. State-by-state and global analysis shows digital attacks concentrate geographically, exposing specific regions and communities to disproportionate risk.

The Human Cost is Measurable


Malicious advertising produces direct financial loss, brand damage, and revenue disruption. Beyond economics, manipulation campaigns and scams increasingly affect vulnerable populations with real-world consequences.

Cybersecurity vs. Digital Safety


The report distinguishes system-level security from human-level safety, arguing that compliance alone is insufficient in today’s data-driven advertising ecosystem.

Accountability is Becoming Enforceable


Regulatory scrutiny, advertiser expectations, and governance standards are converging. Organizations that fail to address malicious activity within monetization systems face mounting reputational, financial, and regulatory risk.

A Call for Industry-Wide Responsibility

The report concludes with what The Media Trust calls The Guardian Imperative: protecting people and protecting profit are not competing priorities, they are operationally linked.

When malicious creatives degrade user trust, traffic declines. Fraud diverts advertiser spend, weak enforcement increases regulatory exposure, and diminished user trust impacts long-term monetization. Consumer protection, brand integrity, and revenue performance are structurally connected within the advertising ecosystem, and weaknesses in one area directly affect the others.

The organizations that invest in proactive threat detection, real-time enforcement, and shared intelligence do more than reduce risk. They strengthen long-term monetization resilience.

Availability

The full 2026 Intelligence Report, When Advertising Entered the Cyber Conversation, is now available at: https://info.mediatrust.com/2026-intelligence-report

The Media Trust today announced its technology and team helping strengthen trust and safety across Microsoft’s advertising ecosystem.

Through this collaboration, The Media Trust will provide critical global threat detection and real-time mitigation solutions to enhance Microsoft’s ability to protect users of its owned and operated publishers from malware, redirects, cloaked ads, and other malicious activities that can undermine user experience and disrupt digital revenue. This collaboration will enhance Microsoft’s ability to deliver a secure, high-quality advertising environment for consumers and partners worldwide.

The Media Trust will utilize its proprietary AI detection, global infrastructure, and malware team visibility across other partner inventory to identify and eliminate threats at the source, ensuring protection without unnecessarily disrupting legitimate advertiser revenue. TMT’s global infrastructure, advanced emulation technology, and expert malware analysis teams provide the scale and precision needed to meet the complex challenges of modern ad ecosystems.

This collaboration reflects The Media Trust’s continued leadership in digital trust, helping global brands, platforms, and agencies safeguard their users and revenue through a cleaner, more transparent advertising ecosystem.

The Media Trust have some insights in regards to the increase in cybercrime activity during the government shutdown. Showing that the government shutdown is having an effect that I bet nobody planned for.

Specifically, the researchers at The Media Trust have observed cybercrime activities for the past couple of weeks since the threat of a government shutdown through to two weeks into the shutdown.

1. The company’s malware desk is projecting more than 555M cyberattacks on the US Federal government in the month of October. This is an 85% increase over the month prior. 
2. They observed a spike in malware activity at the end of September as the threat of a federal shutdown was being projected in the media.  (see chart)
3. The day of the shutdown (October 1st) researchers saw a significant increase in phishing attacks. More than 90% of the attacks against the Federal government from the end of September through today have been phishing attacks.  (see chart)
4. October is now trending toward being the second-highest month of 2025 for cyberattacks on the Federal Government.
5. The top US Federal government agencies that have seen the most cyberattacks through the Federal Government shutdown (see chart) include, in order:
   • U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs
   • U. S. Department of Justice
   • Department Of Education
   • FBI Criminal Justice Information Services
   • U.S. Department of State
   • Department of Homeland Security
   • Department of Administrative Services
   • Federal Aviation Administration
   • U.S. Department of Energy

The Media Trust, the preeminent leader in digital trust and safety for websites and mobile apps, confirms Ukrainian consumers are being targeted with malware. For at least 2 months prior to the physical military incursion, consumers experienced a 2X increase in malware which has continued to climb to 5X by the end of April.

“Collectively, everyone needs to take responsibility for how their websites and mobile apps can harm consumers. Only then can we establish digital trust and safety for consumers around the world.“ 

Client-side monitoring reveals a significant change in targeted digital content and advertising affecting consumers based in Ukraine.

In the course of typical online use—accessing ecommerce, media, entertainment—consumers are increasingly exposed to credential collection tactics. Each incident can affect thousands of consumers.

These attacks directly impact the digital and personal safety of consumers, including those affiliated with the military, government, and infrastructure sectors. The national security implications of unabated malware delivery are profound. Once a device is penetrated, malware collects information—device details, contacts, links to other systems—that will be used in future attacks.

Learn more: 5X Increase in Malware Targeting Ukraine Consumers

The Media Trust, the preeminent leader in digital security, trust and safety for websites and mobile apps, has been honored by the Trustworthy Accountability Group (TAG) as a “TAG Trust Champion” for its long-standing efforts to communicate and remediate malvertising threats across the digital advertising ecosystem.

Each year, TAG recognizes industry leaders who have made exceptional contributions to eliminating fraudulent traffic, facilitating the sharing of threat intelligence, or promoting brand safety and declares them TAG Trust Champions. This year, The Media Trust is being commended along with other members of the TAG Threat Exchange (TX) for sharing real-time intelligence and partnering to shut down malvertising assaults, resulting in shorter and less impactful attacks across the digital ad supply chain.

As a strong supporter and the only anti-malware vendor in the TAG Threat Exchange, The Media Trust continuously provides other TAG members with detailed information regarding active threats propagating in the digital advertising ecosystem. On a weekly basis, The Media Trust adds context to these threats and counsels industry partners on mitigation steps that can be understood by both technical and management teams.

A longtime proponent of ad industry collaboration, The Media Trust launched its Gold Shield program in 2021 to highlight AdTech platforms with remarkable quality standards and dedication to protecting consumers. Initial participants in the program include Adobe Marketing Cloud, Adelphic by Viant, Index Exchange, and Yahoo.