Hasta La Creative!

Scam ads are a chronic problem in adland, a sort of dark underbelly of the industry where agencies and individuals trying to win awards submit work that’s never been approved by a client or run more than a couple times.

Every few years an ad is so offensive that it gets noticed beyond its home country and makes global headlines. This happened most recently with the Ford Figo fiasco, which led Ad Age to delve into the matter again to see how it impacts the reputation of agencies today and map the ways that clients are put at risk. But the practice goes back much further than that.

Here’s a roundup of our coverage, both recent and from the archives — a steadily-growing timeline of incidents and controversies over scam ads, also known as “ghost ads.”

Continue reading at AdAge.com