Over the past few weeks prosecutors in Vietnam and China have described several large piracy operations in unusual detail. The sites, the courts and the content differ. The answer to how the operators were paid is much the same: advertising.

In Vietnam, the operators of HiAnime are accused of receiving 12.85 million USDT, about VND315 billion, from the advertising platform Propeller Ads, and four of them face money-laundering charges alongside copyright charges [1]. Police say the Xôi Lạc TV networks earned more than VND130 billion from gambling advertising, paid as about 5.2 million USDT, and treat the whole amount as illegal gains [2]. Bún Chả TV, whose 14 operators were sentenced last month, carried advertising that steered viewers to online gambling sites and paid its staff in cryptocurrency [3]. In China, the Supreme People’s Procuratorate says income from copyright crime is shifting from selling copies to “traffic”: advertising, memberships and virtual-currency payments. One group it cites collected over 392 million yuan in advertising fees from video-aggregation apps [4].

These are four cases, not a survey, and they come from two countries whose prosecutors publish more detail than most. Wider measurement points the same way, though. Digital Citizens Alliance and White Bullet estimated in 2021 that piracy sites and apps earn about US$1.34 billion a year from advertising [5]. The EU Intellectual Property Office‘s monitoring for 2025 put the figure for the websites it tracked at EUR 382 million worldwide, and found fraud and malware ads had grown from 14% to 25% of ad impressions on those sites in a year [6]. Neither study measures our region specifically.

A media business with a pirate’s cost base

A pirate streaming site is, in commercial terms, an ad-funded media business that pays nothing for its content. Its real costs are servers, domains, developers, commentators and promotion. Advertising pays for all of it. In Bún Chả TV, prosecutors described a company structure with programming, operations, content and commentator teams, built to attract viewers and earn advertising revenue [3].

The money does not go straight from advertiser to operator. It passes through ad networks willing to serve high-risk categories, gambling operators buying traffic, and payment routes that are hard to trace, such as offshore accounts and stablecoins. Each of those links is a point where money changes hands and a record is created.

This is why the obvious response often disappoints. Blocking and takedowns hit the storefront. HiAnime ran on more than 100 domain names [1]. A blocked domain is a cost to the operator, but while the advertisers keep paying for traffic, a replacement domain can earn much as the old one did. Blocking is still worth having, and Indonesia plans to make its blocking recommendations free [7]. It works best when something else is also squeezing the income.

Where a brand’s ad can end up

Most brands found on pirate sites never chose to be there. Their ads are bought automatically: the brand briefs an agency, the agency buys through a demand-side platform, and an exchange auctions the slot to whichever site has a matching viewer. Unless someone has excluded the site, a pirate stream can be that site.

The European monitoring found major brands made up 36% of ad impressions on the infringing websites it tracked in 2025, and suggested that watch lists may have become less effective at keeping ads off them [6]. The 2021 study found about one in four ads on piracy apps came from well-known companies [5]. For a brand, that means its name beside casino banners and malware, and its money funding the people who pirate its partners’ content.

Two tools in the region are aimed at exactly this. In Thailand, the Department of Intellectual Property, three advertising associations and more than 20 rights owners signed a memorandum of understanding in October 2022 committing to remove ads from infringing websites and apps [8]. In Vietnam, the information ministry publishes a black list of law-breaking websites that advertisers are asked to avoid: 403 sites in 2023, including six run by Xôi Lạc TV [9][10]. Neither has published results showing how much ad money it has stopped. A brand can still ask its agency for site-level placement reports, check them against these lists, and make sure its exclusion lists include known pirate domains.

What the money trail gives a rights owner

In these prosecutions the advertising money did more than explain motive. It became evidence. Xôi Lạc TV’s police findings tie the founders to the advertising income and count it all as illegal gains [2]. In HiAnime, the ad receipts support money-laundering charges as well as copyright ones [1]. In the Aiyifan case in China, the defendant whose conviction was upheld was the man who handled ad placement and promotion for the platform [11].

For a rights owner preparing a complaint, the useful questions follow the money. Which ad networks and advertisers appear on the site, and in which markets? How are payments made: bank transfer, payment processor or crypto wallet? Who registered the domains, and which hosting and CDN providers do they use? Can you show the scale of the income, not only the scale of the infringement? Building that picture is the core of an intelligence-led investigation. Turning it into something a police unit or prosecutor can act on is evidence and case development.

The decision

A rights owner facing a large ad-funded site has three broad routes, and they are not exclusive.

• Blocking and takedowns are quick and visible, and increasingly cheap. They hit the storefront, not the income, and expect the site to reappear.
• Pressure on the advertising side (reporting the site to ad networks, using Thailand’s MoU or Vietnam’s list, asking brands to check placements) is low-cost. It depends on intermediaries who care about their reputation. Gambling advertisers buying traffic may not.
• A criminal complaint built on the money trail is slower and needs stronger evidence and local counsel. HiAnime went from complaint in May to indictment in October [1]. It is the only route that reaches the people and the proceeds.

The real question is the order. The ad money is easiest to document while the site is live and earning, which argues for mapping it before blocking, not after.

What we do not yet know is whether these prosecutions shrink the market for pirate advertising or simply move it to new sites. The evidence that would settle it is ad-impression data on replacement sites in the months after each case. Rights owners and brands that track this are better placed to decide where their next enforcement budget should go.

This article is general commentary, not legal advice. Readers should take professional advice on their own circumstances.

Sources

1. Talented IP (citing VietnamPlus, Báo Bảo vệ pháp luật and VnEconomy). Vietnam indicts seven over HiAnime pirate anime and film sites. Published 2026-11-02. English. Byline: Oliver Walsh. Accessed 3 November 2026.
2. Talented IP (citing Công an Nhân dân, 21 Oct 2026, and Dân trí, 5 Sep 2026). Update: Xôi Lạc TV piracy case: Vietnam indicts 74. Published 2026-10-23. English. Byline: Oliver Walsh. Accessed 3 November 2026.
3. Talented IP (citing VTC News, 29 Oct and 27 May 2026). Vietnam court sentences 14 over ‘Bún Chả TV’ pirate football streaming site. Published 2026-10-30. English. Byline: Oliver Walsh. Accessed 3 November 2026.
4. Xinhua (from the Supreme People’s Procuratorate WeChat account). 最高检：侵犯著作权犯罪更趋产业化、链条化、跨境化. Published 2026-10-22. Chinese. Byline: Supreme People’s Procuratorate. Accessed 3 November 2026. Working English title translation: SPP: copyright crimes increasingly industrialised, chain-based and cross-border (working translation).
5. PR Newswire (Digital Citizens Alliance and White Bullet). Advertising fuels $1.34 billion illegal piracy market, report by Digital Citizens Alliance and White Bullet finds (“Breaking (B)ads”). Published 2021-08-12. English. Byline: Digital Citizens Alliance and White Bullet. Accessed 3 November 2026.
6. European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO). Online Advertising on IPR-Infringing Websites and Apps 2025. Published 2026-06-23. English. Byline: EUIPO. Accessed 3 November 2026.
7. Talented IP. Indonesia to make IP site-blocking recommendations free. Published 2026-10-27. English. Byline: Oliver Walsh. Accessed 3 November 2026.
8. Department of Intellectual Property, Thailand. MoU on Online Advertising and IP Rights. Published 2022-10-28. English. Byline: Department of Intellectual Property. Accessed 3 November 2026.
9. Tuổi Trẻ. Đề nghị không quảng cáo trên hơn 400 website vi phạm pháp luật. Published 2024-01-03. Vietnamese. Byline: Not stated. Accessed 3 November 2026. Working English title translation: Advertisers asked not to advertise on more than 400 law-breaking websites (working translation).
10. Báo Lào Cai. 403 website có dấu hiệu vi phạm pháp luật năm 2023: Xôi Lạc TV bị ‘gọi tên’. Published 2024-01-04. Vietnamese. Byline: Not stated. Accessed 3 November 2026. Working English title translation: 403 websites showing signs of breaking the law in 2023: Xôi Lạc TV ‘named’ (working translation).
11. Talented IP (citing ifeng.com, 7 Jul 2026, and TorrentFreak, 18 Oct 2026). Shanghai court upholds jail term for Aiyifan pirate streaming operator. Published 2026-10-29. English. Byline: Oliver Walsh. Accessed 3 November 2026.