Online Reporter
LONDON. — Some of the biggest tech companies in the world served ads on a website featuring images of child abuse, helping to fund its operations.
It shines a light into the dark corners of digital advertising.
Sometimes you come across an image online that’s so horrifying you can’t unsee it.
For Krzysztof Franaszek, it happened at work.
Franaszek runs the advertising research firm Adalytics based in the US.
Recently, he was studying where ads for the US Department of Homeland Security end up online, and the project took him to an image-sharing website called ImgBB.
There, Franaszek uncovered something sickening: sexually explicit images of a very young child, with adverts for Fortune 500 companies running alongside them.
He immediately reported the content to the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and child safety organisations.
The Canadian Centre for Child Protection — one of those Franaszek alerted — says it found at least 35 images flagged by Adalytics on the site that meet its classification of child sexual abuse material (CSAM).
The Centre says it notified ImgBB, and the images were taken down.
An FBI spokesperson says the bureau reviews all allegations of criminal conduct but does not comment on tips from the public. The DHS did not respond to questions.
The more Franaszek dug, the clearer the problem became — and his findings raise questions about how the adverts you see online may also be inadvertently pumping large sums of money into undesirable, and at times illegal, corners of the internet.
According to a new report from Adalytics, advertising systems run by companies including Google, Amazon and Microsoft have inadvertently funnelled money to the owners of a website hosting illegal images of child sex abuse.
In addition to CSAM, Adalytics documented ads for more than 70 large organisations and Fortune 500 companies running alongside hardcore adult pornography, including MasterCard, Nestlé, Starbucks, Unilever and even the US Government.
“Many advertisers whose ads appeared on this website probably had no idea that they were funding this kind of content,” Franaszek says.
On 7 February 2025, US Senators Marsha Blackburn and Richard Blumenthal sent letters to Amazon, Google and other ad tech companies mentioned in the report, demanding answers about whether this problem represents a widespread issue across the internet.
“The dissemination of [child sexual abuse material] is a heinous crime that inflicts irreparable harm on its victims,” the letter to Google reads.
“Where digital advertiser networks like Google place advertisements on websites that are known to host such activity, they have, in effect, created a funding stream that perpetuates criminal operations and irreparable harm to our children.”
While a few images of child abuse on a single website have alarmed many both inside and outside the industry, they also provide a glimpse of some of the wider problems afflicting the inscrutable world of digital advertising.
Most people who use the internet will be familiar with the clamour of digital ads fighting for their attention.
They are the product of a system so vast and complex that even the companies who run it don’t always know where their money is going.
For years, critics have warned that the tech industry will unwittingly line the pockets of bad actors across the web without serious regulatory oversight. Lawmakers are still catching up. — BBC.
Mathew Masinge