DecryptAds identifies 2,116 AI recipe sites as ad-tech firms dispute its findings

DecryptAds says it has identified 2,116 AI-generated recipe sites packed with ads, with major brands appearing on their pages, according to AdExchanger’s coverage. The study, released October 20, traces connections to advertising intermediaries—but several named companies dispute or qualify those links, exposing how difficult it is to establish who actually helps these sites earn money.

The sites combine low-effort recipes with overlapping ad placements, following the made-for-advertising model: pages built around advertising revenue. DecryptAds research chief Zach Edwards stressed that the investigation found no evidence of crimes by the sites or their advertising partners.

From 400 suspicious sites to a larger network

DecryptAds began with about 300 ad-tech companies in jurisdictions it classifies as risky. Food-related keywords narrowed their connected publishers to 400 suspicious recipe sites. Edwards said he manually checked each for AI-generated avatars and concealed authorship. The team developed more than 190 technical fingerprints to find other sites operated by the same owners.

Its tracing combined public advertising files called ads.txt and sellers.json with domain-name records, security certificates and Google Analytics data. But those public files can contain errors and go without updates, complicating efforts to establish advertising relationships.

A listed connection is not always a paying relationship

DecryptAds attributed monetization of 1,631 sites to HBAgency, a supply-side platform, or SSP, which helps publishers sell ad space. HBAgency said it works directly only with Monetix Ads among eight partners highlighted in one example. It described AdMatic as Monetix’s technology provider, not its own direct commercial partner.

HBAgency said every publisher is screened by an independent fraud provider. It also described invalid-traffic checks, protection against malicious advertising and ongoing publisher reviews.

MonetizeMore CEO Kean Graham said MonetizeMore was not actively running its own advertising demand or its partners’ demand on any of the 11 sites attributed to it. One, Bakerias.com, retained a legacy reporting-platform connection but used its own AdSense account. Graham said it had failed MonetizeMore’s traffic and advertising-quality requirements. The company initiated a wider inventory review.

The disagreement over what deserves advertising

Graham said advertisers should not buy inventory relying on deceptive authorship, and that MonetizeMore does not monetize it. Ezoic, which DecryptAds linked to 407 sites, challenged a different premise: that AI authorship inherently makes content low-value. It argued that content should be assessed for quality and usefulness rather than how it was produced.

Ezoic said it rejects more than 98% of applicant sites, combining automated checks with human review. Its assessments consider content, audience engagement and brand safety.