The article analyzes the concept of "unethical advertising". The problem of violation of ethical norms permeates all spheres of public life, and advertising discourse as a type of institutional communication is also subject to these violations. Based on ethical criteria in advertising revealed иy A.V. Malik, the authors analyze ethical violations caused by deliberate ambiguity of the advertising text. This ambiguity can arise when playing on homonymy or polysemy of both literary and non-systemic linguistic units. Such a game "on the verge of a foul " creates text torts that can appear as an advertising slogan or in the name of a commercial object. The authors distinguish two groups of texts in which this phenomenon is recorded. The first group includes slogans and commercial names that cause associations with obscene, abusive words. The second group combines texts on the basis of contradiction with the rules of behavior, decency and good tone. As a result of the analysis of the text material, the authors conclude that the lack of clear criteria of ethics in advertising communication does not allow to fully regulate advertising activities, which leads to the frequent occurrence of unethical and immoral advertising, which not only attracts the attention of the recipient, but also has an impact on the formation of new values and behaviors.