social media giant meta According to internal estimates, about 10 percent of 2024 revenue, about $16 billion, is expected to come from running ads for scams and banned items. Reported by Reuters,
The company, which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, failed to identify and stop “an avalanche of advertisements” that exposed billions of users to “fraudulent e-commerce and investment schemes, illegal online casinos and the sale of banned medical products,” according to the news wire.
Reuters cited a December 2024 document indicating that Meta served an estimated 15 billion “high-risk” scam ads to users every day on average. Another internal document late last year reportedly said the company makes about $7 billion in annual revenue from such ads each year.
Other documents show that Meta was slow to crack down on “scammers” even after becoming aware of them, Reuters noted. The documents reportedly show that some big spenders – known internally as “high value accounts” – were able to accumulate more than 500 strikes without being shut down.
The outlet also found that users who Clicked on scam ads Seeing additional ads was more likely due to Meta’s ad-personalization system, which attempts to deliver ads based on the user’s interests.
A spokesperson for Meta told The Hill’s sister network NewsNation that the 10 percent revenue estimate from policy-violating ads cited in the report was “rough and over-inclusive” and not a “definitive or final figure.”
The spokesperson said the company aggressively fights fraud and scams, noting that over the past 15 months, user reports of scam ads have declined by more than 50 percent.
He said, “Unfortunately, the leaked documents present a selective view that distorts Meta’s approach to fraud and scams by focusing our efforts on assessing the scale of the challenge, rather than on the full range of actions we have taken to address the problem.”
Meta reported over $50 billion Advertising revenue last quarter increased 26 percent year over year – bringing its total so far this year to $138 billion.
