Even online retailed Amazon made about 10 per cent of its revenue last year from selling ad space to its vendors. HotWired knew their six advertising customers; modern ad tech sells ad space to millions of entities through complex exchanges designed to match payers to our personal profiles. For tech companies to succeed in this industry, all incentives lead to making buying ad space as quick, easy and “low friction” as possible. An astonishing one in 10 social media ads, according to the research commissioned by Revolut, are scams. They were also fake AI videos of Irish celebrities fake-shilling everything from face cream to bitcoin.

Source: The Irish Times February 13, 2026 11:27 UTC