Meta earns about $7 billion a year on scam ads, report says

Meta is reportedly making a lot of money off scam ads.

A new investigative report from Reuters, citing Meta's own internal documents, found that the company's platforms show, on average, an estimated 15 billion "higher risk" scam advertisements to its users every day. Reuters reported that a 2024 document showed that Meta makes about "$7 billion in annualized revenue" from those scam ads each year.

The internal documents revealed by Reuters show that Meta expected as much as 10 percent of its 2024 ad revenue "would come from ads for scams and banned goods."

Wrote Reuters:

"A cache of previously unreported documents reviewed by Reuters also shows that the social-media giant for at least three years failed to identify and stop an avalanche of ads that exposed Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp’s billions of users to fraudulent e-commerce and investment schemes, illegal online casinos, and the sale of banned medical products."

Scammy ads have become a routine part of online life, and Mashable has reported on fraudulent Facebook ads repeatedly over the years. You might see a Facebook ad for an AI-powered photo editor and download malware. Or you might see one for Joann fabrics — except that, too, is a scam. The new report suggests this is actually a lucrative portion of Meta's advertising business.

The Reuters report also revealed, according to the internal documents, that Meta "only bans advertisers if its automated systems predict the marketers are at least 95% certain to be committing fraud" — while other likely scammers simply get charged a higher rate as punishment. So, yes, that might make scammers pause — but it would also make Meta a lot of money. Billions of dollars a year, in fact.

So, the next time you go to click on an ad on Facebook or Instagram, be careful.