Disinformation: The Dark Side of Digital Advertising’s Profit Machine

In today’s digital landscape, deceptive online content has evolved into a lucrative industry fueled by a simple equation: more engagement equals more revenue. With the global digital advertising market now valued at €625 billion, platforms and content creators have strong financial incentives to promote content that captures attention—regardless of its veracity or social impact.

The business model is straightforward but troubling. Social media platforms provide users with free “infotainment” while harvesting their data to create predictive analytics for advertisers. What drives this ecosystem is engagement—clicks, views, shares, and comments—which often rewards inflammatory, polarizing content over factual, balanced reporting.

“This is not an accident,” explains media researchers who have documented how platforms profit from the spread of misinformation while many advertisers deliberately ignore where their ads appear. Studies show that content evoking strong emotions, particularly anger and anxiety, is significantly more likely to go viral, a phenomenon that platforms have deliberately built into their recommendation algorithms.

Disinformation campaigns work by strategically spreading deceptive or manipulative content to confuse, paralyze, and polarize society. These campaigns employ sophisticated tools including bots, deepfakes, fabricated news stories, and conspiracy theories—all designed to maximize emotional reactions and engagement.

While previous research often portrayed disinformation as an abuse of the system by bad actors or authoritarian regimes, emerging evidence suggests it may actually be the predictable outcome of digital marketing’s underlying business model.

The connection between digital marketing and disinformation runs deep. The industry comprises search optimization, content marketing, influencer partnerships, targeted advertising, and affiliate programs—all operating through ad tech firms that deploy sophisticated software to track users across the internet. These firms often operate with minimal oversight or accountability.

“When a brand pays an ad tech firm to place their ads, they also outsource their responsibility,” notes one industry observer. This disconnection means brands frequently—and sometimes unknowingly—fund content spreading disinformation about major global events including the Russia-Ukraine and Israel-Palestine conflicts.

Influencers play a particularly problematic role in this ecosystem. Motivated by advertising revenue, many seek engagement at any cost, sometimes promoting content that actively undermines democratic institutions. Platforms face little financial incentive to address this issue since they retain the advertising revenue even when problematic accounts are eventually demonetized.

Recent investigations have found that major brands like Apple, IBM, and Oracle have unwittingly funded content promoting hate speech and conspiracy theories. According to a report by NewsGuard and Comscore, billions in advertising dollars flow to websites known for spreading misinformation.

“Most brands don’t want to be associated with hate speech and bot farms, but they are,” says one digital marketing expert. “It’s easy to look the other way in such a technically complicated market, but marketers have a responsibility. Brands become complicit by remaining silent.”

Current reform efforts mainly focus on content moderation and fact-checking, but critics argue these approaches fail to address the underlying economic incentives driving the problem. A more effective approach might target the digital advertising market itself.

The recent advertising boycott of X (formerly Twitter) following Elon Musk’s controversial remarks demonstrated that collective action by advertisers can influence platform behavior. Major companies including Apple, Disney, and IBM paused their spending, causing significant financial pressure and drawing public attention to platform policies.

As UNESCO and other organizations push for regulation of social media platforms to counter disinformation, experts stress that meaningful change requires addressing the profit motives that currently reward divisive, inaccurate content over factual reporting.

“If platforms and ad tech firms prove unwilling or unable to reform a market that profits from disinformation,” concludes one policy advocate, “policymakers must step in to ensure that the profits of these tech giants do not come at the cost of our democracy.”