SKILL / Media
Plans: Pro & AgencyAdvertising Transparency
Examine public advertising records and assess evidence connecting campaigns, advertisers, domains and claimed companies.
Read the step-by-step user guideAdvertising Transparency answers who is publicly advertising a product, service or message, and how firmly those campaigns connect to a named advertiser, a domain and a claimed company. In Nexus the investigator receives the public advertising records found for the subject, with the advertiser identity shown in each record, the destinations the ads point to and the period during which they ran. Each record is linked to its public source so the wording and timing can be inspected directly.
What you get
A sourced assessment of public ad campaigns and how firmly they connect to advertisers, domains and companies.
Using Advertising Transparency in an investigation
The Skill then assesses the connections rather than assuming them. An advertiser name that matches a company, a landing-page domain that resolves to a known site and an advertiser identity that has been independently confirmed carry different evidential weight, and Advertising Transparency labels each link as supported, possible or unresolved. This matters when a campaign uses a brand it is not entitled to, when a company denies running an ad, or when several apparently unrelated campaigns share a destination.
In a Nexus case, advertisers, domains and promoted products become evidence records that can be placed on the case graph next to findings from Domain Registration Intelligence, Company Directory Research or App and Developer Intelligence. Brand-protection teams use the result to document unauthorized use, fraud investigators use it to trace who is paying to reach victims, and competitive analysts use it to see what a rival is promoting and where, all exportable in a PDF report.
Example objectives
Run the Skill directly, or describe the objective in your own words — these are the kinds of questions it is built to answer.
Ask Nexus
“Which public ad campaigns promote this domain, and who is listed as the advertiser?”
Ask Nexus
“Are there advertisers running campaigns that use our brand name without authorization?”
Ask Nexus
“What has this competitor been advertising over the past six months, and which landing pages do the ads use?”
How Advertising Transparency fits the investigation
A Skill is one move inside a case. The findings stay in the case file, where the evidence behind them can be checked, graphed and reported.
- 01
Choose or describe
Pick the Skill from the Skill Library, or describe the objective in your own words and let Nexus work out which Skills fit the question.
- 02
Review the evidence
Open the evidence record behind any finding and read the original public source before you rely on what it says.
- 03
Add to the case graph
Promote the people, organizations and identifiers you accept into the case relationship graph, straight from their evidence records.
- 04
Brief and report
Turn the case into a BLUF situation brief and, on Pro and Agency, into a structured PDF report with chain of custody.
Evidence before conclusions
What Advertising Transparency cannot establish
Nexus keeps supported findings, possible matches, contradictions and information gaps apart instead of blending them into one narrative. These are the boundaries Advertising Transparency states up front.
- A campaign that names a company, or that points to its domain, does not on its own prove that the company owns, controls or authorized the advertising.
- Public advertising records cover only the channels and regions that publish them, so campaigns can exist that are not visible, and a subject with no records is not necessarily inactive.
- Advertiser identities are self-declared in many records and should be corroborated through registry or domain research before they are relied on.
Best for
Teams that reach for Advertising Transparency most often.
Related OSINT concepts
The vocabulary this Skill works in, defined in the glossary.
Related Skills
Skills investigators commonly run next, in the same case.
Frequently asked questions
What does Advertising Transparency show for a campaign?
Advertising Transparency shows the public record of a campaign: the advertiser identity displayed with it, the product, service or message promoted, the domains or apps the ads point to and the period during which they ran. Each record is linked to its public source. Nexus then assesses how firmly the campaign connects to a named advertiser and company and labels that connection as supported, possible or unresolved.
Does an ad campaign prove that a company is behind it?
An ad campaign does not prove that a company is behind it: a campaign can name a company, use its branding or link to its domain without the company having placed or authorized it. Advertising Transparency records what the public advertising record shows and labels the link to a claimed company as supported only when independent evidence backs it. The investigator can then confirm the connection with domain registration, company registry or filing research within the same Nexus case.
Is Advertising Transparency useful for brand protection?
Advertising Transparency helps brand-protection teams find campaigns that use a protected name or product without authorization, identify the declared advertiser and collect the destination domains involved. Combined with Domain Registration Intelligence and App and Developer Intelligence in a Nexus case, the result is a sourced package that documents the misuse, links the parties involved and can be exported as a PDF report.
Which Nexus plan includes Advertising Transparency?
Advertising Transparency is included in the Skill Library on the Pro and Agency plans. Pro includes 43 of the 47 investigative Skills and Agency includes all 47. Investigations on every plan use credits, and a plan can be upgraded from within Nexus at any time.