Google is advertising scams near the top of the page

I’ve been looking at portable battery/generators… Jackery, Bluetti, Ecoflow, Anker Solix, etc… (those are legit Amazon links if you want to actually price them out on a non-scam site), and ads for portable battery “solar generators” have been appearing in my Gmail website interface:

Visiting the site link shows impossible discounts and a fake popup showing “real time buyers”. Still, without these immediate clues I would have not noticed the fake site until I looked at the address bar. If the site felt a little less like a scam site, it would have been very easy to make a purchase (although the regular price of these things would make me double and triple check the site and everything).

I reported both ads but they’re still there… and at the top of the gmail interface.

Actual Jackery ads in the middle of the page

An actual verified advertiser is midway down the list

Reporting broken?

Two hours after reporting the ads, Google is redisplaying the ads from the same unverified advertisers at the top of my GMail

One day later, more ads from the “rariyg tasdrg” advertiser (still unverified) but this time with a different knock off domain (jackerys.best today vs. jackerypowers.top)

The scams get more aggressive?

A few days later, a German ad under a new domain name appeared near the top of my Gmail promotions tab:

Again, they have the status “Advertiser has not verified their identity yet”.

Meanwhile, Gmail makes the indication that the “email” is actually a paid ad a little more subtle.

Once I reported the ad, the inbox refreshed to put the ad at the very top of the tab.

The Jackery ads served by Yahoo (served through criteo.com), are actually legitimate by comparison.