Docs: Meta projected in December 2024 that 10.1% of its 2024 revenue, or $16B, came from ads for scams and banned goods, including ~$7B from “higher risk” ads
Meta projected 10% of its 2024 revenue would come from ads for scams and banned goods, documents seen by Reuters show.
ReutersJeff Horwitz
Context & Ripple Effects
Meta had already characterized scams on Facebook and Instagram as an “epidemic of scams”, while reporting pointed to tension between enforcement and a fast-growing advertising business. The documents put a concrete revenue figure on that tension.
The disclosure gives Meta, regulators, and litigants a documented estimate of the ad revenue potentially exposed to stricter enforcement against scams and prohibited goods.
Meta’s ad-integrity teams face a clearer commercial trade-off: removing higher-risk inventory can reduce harmful ads but also eliminates revenue the company had projected to retain.
Second-order effects
Tighter screening or advertiser verification would shift costs toward ad review, account enforcement, and appeals, while potentially reducing available inventory for riskier advertisers.
Large advertisers and agencies may press Meta for stronger brand-safety controls and clearer enforcement evidence, especially where fraudulent promotions can appear alongside legitimate campaigns.
Third-order effects
If platforms increasingly quantify revenue linked to policy-violating advertising, enforcement may focus not only on harmful content but on the economic incentives that sustain it.
The episode points toward a more regulated platform take rate, where ad-growth quality—not just ad-growth volume—becomes a lasting governance and compliance issue.
The trend: Digital-ad platforms are moving toward greater accountability for whether revenue growth depends on advertiser categories that their own rules prohibit or flag as high risk.
This explains why they've been declining to take down anything I reported over the past 2-3 years. — This is downright criminal behavior. In any normal country, Zuckerberg would be charged and Meta servers taken offline just like Europol dismantled those scam networks this wee…
#Meta purposely allows scam & banned goods ads - earning 7 BILLION DOLLARS a year directly from these ads, deliberately exposing users to these frauds. Yet once again, $META faces no legal consequences or accountability for perpetuating harm on the public. — www.reuters.com/in…
Meta is earning a fortune on deluge of fraudulent ads — “Meta projected 10% of its 2024 revenue would come from ads for scams & banned goods..15 bil scam ads/day. Among its responses to suspected rogue marketers: charging them premium for ads ..' www.reuters.com/investigatio..…
This doesn't come as a surprise to anyone looking into disinformation and scams on Meta's platforms but the scale is kind of incredible: “the social media giant internally estimates that its platforms show users 15 billion scam ads a day” — www.reuters.com/investigatio...
This piece suggests Meta is dragging its heels on reducing the (very large) number of scam ads on its services because they're concerned it will materially hurt revenue (the article estimates they make as much as $16bn a year from scam ads) — www.reuters.com/investigatio...
10% of Meta's 2024 ad revenue came from outright frauds and scams; the platform shows consumers 15 billion ads for fraud and scams every single day. This doesn't even include agitprop and AI slop. — the existential collapse of this monumental pile of shit company simply can't …
Meta earns $3.5 billion every six months from showing Faceboon and Instagram users 15 billion “higher legal risk” scam ad impressions a day, internal documents state. — That haul vastly exceeds how much the company expects regulators — To fine it for running scam ads. — www…
Meta annually earns $16 billion (with a “b") on ads built to defraud people. — It's so bad that Meta itself admits that its advertising tools and platforms have made it a pillar of the global scam economy. — Reporting by Reuters. — www.reuters.com/investigatio... [image]
This company has a stock market valuation of $1.6 trillion. More jaw-dropping reporting by @jeffhorwitz.bsky.social. — www.reuters.com/investigatio... [image]