Israel-Based Influence Operation Bought 831 Million Ad Impressions

By Elena Vasquez

A covert influence operation produced in Israel delivered a projected 831 million ad impressions across Europe, the US and beyond, according to a new report by Marc Owen Jones, associate professor of media analytics at Northwestern University in Qatar, and Sohan D'Souza, a visiting researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin. The researchers recorded 533 million exposures directly, with the higher figure projected to account for gaps in the advertising archives.

The campaign began in October 2023. It ranks among the largest paid digital influence operations ever documented. Jones described it as "the biggest covert influence operation targeting the UK by recorded reach and ad spend."

Facebook pages named Save Europe and The Plot Against Europe spent more than £500,000 ($660,000) on hundreds of adverts shown to British users in 2024 alone.

How did researchers trace the campaign to Israel?

The pair spent almost three years following the trail, which ran from Vietnam to Brazil, through fake Eurovision entries, Times Square billboards and two former beauty queens, a Miss Mississippi and a Miss Tennessee. Advertising records and shared material connected apparently separate campaigns, with a Vietnamese intermediary appearing in the ad infrastructure.

The decisive evidence sat inside 78 videos from the campaign's Telegram channel. Editing metadata contained Hebrew folder names, a Sunday-to-Thursday working pattern and timestamps consistent with production at UTC+3. One editing account shifted to UTC+2 when Israel changed its clocks in October 2024. A campaign-linked Wikipedia editing sequence exposed a fixed-line Israeli IP address behind edits using German proxies.

Jones said the clues collectively "make a strong case for production in Israel," though they do not reveal the commissioning contract or the ultimate funder.

What did the campaign actually say?

The operation promoted the Great Replacement conspiracy theory, the claim that Muslims are displacing white populations. Jones framed it plainly: "Our findings point to production in Israel and raise the possibility that Israeli actors are financing an effort to strengthen Britain's far right, inflame hostility towards Muslims and undermine support for Palestine."

Qatar was cast in the role usually assigned to George Soros: the hidden financier supposedly destroying Western civilisation through immigration. Jones assessed that undermining Qatar's role as a mediator with Hamas was a central purpose. Hostage-related material shifted responsibility away from Netanyahu and toward Doha.

One series, titled "The Betrayal of the Academy," portrayed universities as corrupted by Qatari money and students as agents of a foreign power. The campaign also spread false claims about London mayor Sadiq Khan and high crime rates under his administration.

What does it mean for the platforms?

Meta, TikTok and YouTube accepted payment to distribute the material. "The platforms made money from that — millions, in fact," Jones said. When accounts were removed, the operation acquired new ones and continued. The researchers tracked that persistence for three years.

Jones stopped short of attributing the Southport riots to the campaign, but noted it had been "spreading anti-Muslim propaganda in Britain in the preceding months." He called on the EU to investigate and to enforce existing powers under the Digital Services Act, the bloc's content-regulation law. Without consequences for repeatedly selling distribution to covert hate campaigns, he argued, account removals become "a fairly painless cost of doing business."

Has any government responded?

No targeted government has announced a substantive public investigation. "Someone has spent years buying audiences for racist propaganda aimed at their populations. That should be a major concern," Jones said.

He urged platforms to preserve and disclose advertising, spending and account histories, and to act against operations as a whole rather than individual accounts. Governments, he said, should obtain payment records and follow the money, because researchers have reached the limits of what public records can establish.

He closed with a pointed standard: "I find it difficult to imagine this receiving such a muted political response if the evidence pointed to Moscow or Tehran. An ally should not get a free pass to interfere in your society or spread hatred against your citizens."