Scam, Metaverse style: How advertising fraudulent schemes brings in billions for Meta

According to internal documents, Meta predicted that in 2024 it would generate about 10% of its annual revenue — $16 billion — from advertising fraudulent schemes and prohibited goods. Despite numerous warnings about the huge amount of fraudulent advertising that risks endangering billions of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp users, Meta has not taken sufficient measures to combat this phenomenon. It even developed a “penalty rate” mechanism, under which it charged premiums to suspicious advertisers.

Source Minfin

According to the data, Meta users receive up to 15 billion criminal ads every day, and only a fraction of them are banned. Despite numerous complaints, Meta often does not respond to them, and the problem of fraud remains relevant. Company spokesman Andy Stone said Meta is actively fighting fraud, but the results remain disappointing — the company's platforms ranked first in terms of the number of financial scams in 2023.

The current situation has also attracted the attention of regulators: the US Securities and Exchange Commission is conducting an investigation, and in the UK, it has been established that Meta was responsible for 54% of fraud losses in the country. Internal analysts emphasize that competitors are more effective in combating fraud, which raises questions about Meta's strategy in this area.