Advertising is fuelling the sexual exploitation of children online, the home secretary has said, as he commissioned research into the issue.

Before setting off on a trip to the US west coast to meet tech leaders, Sajid Javid announced that a charity would look at how digital advertising may fund exploitation.

Advertisements for legitimate products, including from well-known brands, can appear on sites hosting child abuse, the Home Office said.

The Internet Watch Foundation, a charity that works to remove online child sexual abuse content, has been asked to investigate the scale of the problem and make recommendations on how the government and industry should respond.

Susie Hargreaves, the foundation’s chief executive, said: “Using a variety of sophisticated techniques to avoid detection, offenders are exploiting online advertising networks to monetise their distribution of child sexual abuse material.

“At the heart of all our work are the child victims of this hideous crime. They range from babies to teens. The abuse itself is horrific but by sharing the images and videos of these crimes against innocent children, offenders are forcing the victims to suffer the torment of knowing their abuse continues.”

Javid will chair a taskforce to bring together representatives from ad agencies, trade bodies and brands to discuss steps that could be taken to cut criminals off from this revenue stream.

The home secretary has previously accused tech firms of not doing enough to tackle the issue of child sexual exploitation. This week he will travel to the Microsoft HQ in Redmond, Washington, to convene a “hackathon” where industry experts will work together to develop tools to detect online child grooming.

Javid said: “Keeping our children safe is my mission as home secretary and it is vital tech companies take their responsibility seriously. I have demanded action and will be discussing the progress industry has made during my visit to the US, as well as seeing the latest tools being developed to detect online child grooming.”

The National Crime Agency estimates that around 80,000 people in the UK present some kind of sexual threat to children online. Since 2013 there has been a 700% increase in the number of referrals to the NCA for child sexual abuse images.

Work is being done to develop new tools to improve the capabilities of the child abuse image database (CAID), which is used by the NCA and UK police forces to record indecent images of children and increase the ability to identify victims. Trials to test newly developed capabilities within the database will begin in some police forces later this year.

The Home Office also announced that organisations could bid for up to £250,000 of funding to develop ways of disrupting live-streaming of abuse.

Through the competition, led by the Joint Security and Resilience Centre in partnership with Innovate UK, groups are being urged to come up with technical solutions that could be applied by platforms of all sizes.