The hardest number in this story is a zero: under current law, online platforms face no federal obligation to screen the ads they serve, and two senators want to change that arithmetic. On February 4, 2026, Senators Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) and Bernie Moreno (R-OH) introduced the Safeguarding Consumers from Advertising Misconduct — or SCAM — Act, bipartisan legislation that would require online platforms to take reasonable steps to prevent fraudulent and deceptive advertisements from running in the first place.

For performance marketers, the bill's relevance is structural rather than rhetorical. It aims liability at the platform layer, not at individual affiliates or media buyers. That distinction matters across every deal type in the industry — CPL, CPA, rev-share and hybrid arrangements alike — because platforms responding to a new duty of care typically respond by tightening onboarding, vetting advertisers and restricting categories that generate complaint volume. Offers that live on the edge of compliance, from work-from-home schemes to subscription traps, tend to be the first filtered out when a distribution channel faces legal exposure.

The bill's mechanism, as introduced, has two prongs. First, platforms must take "reasonable steps" to prevent fraudulent and deceptive ads. Second, the legislation would strengthen accountability when deceptive ads slip through. The source material does not define what constitutes a "reasonable step," does not specify penalty amounts, and does not enumerate which regulators would enforce the standard. Those gaps will be where lobbying attention concentrates if the bill moves to committee.

What the introduction does establish is bipartisan appetite for platform-level responsibility, and that alone changes the risk calculus. Ad networks and large affiliate platforms have historically positioned themselves as neutral conduits — paid to distribute, not to verify. A statutory duty of care, even a flexible one, erodes that position. Expect platforms to respond pre-emptively if the bill gains traction: stricter advertiser verification, longer review cycles for new offers, and possibly higher fees passed through to agencies and affiliates to cover compliance overhead.

The compliance context is already crowded. FTC endorsement guides already require clear disclosure of material connections between promoters and products, and affiliate programs routinely carry their own disclosure and prohibited-methods clauses. The SCAM Act would sit upstream of those rules, at the ad-approval layer, creating a second checkpoint between advertiser and consumer. Affiliates running compliant campaigns under disclosed rev-share or CPA deals would see little direct change. Affiliates whose traffic converts on offers that fail a platform's new vetting standard would lose distribution regardless of their own disclosure practices.

There is an important caveat on scale and evidence. The bill has been introduced, not passed; no committee markup date, vote count or CBO cost estimate appears in the source material. Introduction alone predicts little — most bills of this kind stall — but bipartisan sponsorship from a competitive-state Democrat and a Republican gives the proposal more initial credibility than a single-party push would carry.

Marketers should watch three things as the bill progresses: the definition of "reasonable steps," the size and allocation of penalties, and whether any safe harbor exists for platforms that run third-party ad verification. The next signal will come in committee, where the bill's vague duty of care either gains enforceable detail or loses it.