Meta earns billions from fraudulent ads: Reuters reveals details of internal documents
Kyiv • UNN
Internal Meta documents indicate that 10% of the company's annual revenue in 2024, or about $16 billion, came from advertising fraudulent and prohibited products. The company blocks advertisers only when there is 95% certainty of fraud, charging higher rates for less certainty.
Internal reports from the owner of Facebook and Instagram indicate that a tenth of Meta's total revenue, or about $16 billion, in 2024 came from advertising fraudulent and prohibited products.
UNN reports with reference to Reuters.
Details
The American corporation Meta, which unites platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger, according to internal documents reviewed by Reuters, is involved in earning from fraudulent advertising.
According to statistics, Meta offers users of its platforms an average of 15 billion fraudulent ads daily. The social media giant generated 10% of the company's total revenue in 2024 from this. Thus, the transnational company earned about $16 billion.
A set of previously unpublished documents indicates that a significant portion of the fraud comes from marketers who acted suspiciously enough to be noticed by Meta's internal warning systems.
The company blocks advertisers only if its automated systems predict that marketers are at least 95% certain of fraud. If the company is less certain but still believes the advertiser is a likely fraudster, Meta charges higher ad rates as a penalty
Users who click on fraudulent ads see more similar content thanks to Meta's ad personalization system, which displays ads based on users' interests.
Reference
This assessment of Meta's activities is based on documents created in the company's financial, lobbying, engineering, and security departments between 2021 and 2025.
Based on this data, it is possible to draw a conclusion about how Meta works to quantify the scale of abuses on its platforms. Also, the company's "hesitation" instead of decisive countermeasures comes to the surface in cases where this could harm the corporation's business interests.
Meta responded that there is actually less fraudulent advertising
Sandeep Abraham, a fraud expert and former Meta security investigator who now runs a consulting firm called Risky Business Solutions, noted:
Meta's acceptance of revenue from sources it suspects of committing fraud indicates a lack of regulatory oversight of the advertising industry
"If regulators don't tolerate banks profiting from fraud, they shouldn't tolerate it in tech either," he added.
However, Meta spokesperson Andy Stone stated that Reuters' assessment of internal documents represents a "selective view that distorts Meta's approach to fraud and scams." Moreover, the company stated that the actual figure of what Meta could receive in the context of fraudulent advertising is lower than 10.1% of 2024 revenue.
What Reuters relies on in its conclusions also includes "many" legitimate ads, claims the representative of the owner of Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram. At the same time, the Meta spokesperson refused to provide an updated figure.
"The assessment was done to validate our planned investments in integrity, including fighting fraud and scams, which we have done," Stone said.
He emphasized: "We aggressively fight fraud and scams because people on our platforms don't want this content, legitimate advertisers don't want it, and neither do we."
Recall
Meta faced a lawsuit from adult film producers who claim the company illegally uploaded thousands of pornographic videos to train artificial intelligence models.