Meta Projects $16 Billion from Scam Ads in 2024

Internal documents from Meta Platforms Inc. reveal that the company projected roughly 10 percent of its 2024 revenue, or about $16 billion, would come from advertisements promoting scams and banned products across its platforms, including Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. The projections, detailed in reports from late last year, highlight a persistent issue of fraudulent content exposing billions of users to risks such as fake e-commerce schemes, investment frauds, illegal online gambling and prohibited medical products.

The documents, spanning 2021 to 2025 and originating from Meta's finance, engineering, safety and lobbying teams, indicate that the platforms displayed an estimated 15 billion high-risk scam ads each day as of December 2024. These ads met clear criteria for fraud, generating approximately $7 billion in annualized revenue for Meta. Internal estimates linked the company's apps to one-third of successful scams in the United States and 54 percent of payments-related scam losses in the United Kingdom in 2023, according to researchers cited in the materials.

Meta's automated systems flagged suspicious advertisers, but the company only banned accounts when fraud...