According to internal documents obtained by Reuters, Meta estimated that approximately 10% of its total revenue, equivalent to 16 billion dollars in 2023, comes from fraudulent advertisements. The report claims that, in the last three years, Meta has failed to adequately protect users from misleading ads promoting illegal gambling, false investment schemes, and banned medical products.
These scams lure users with false promises, aiming to obtain money or personal information. Although Meta has developed tools to detect potentially fraudulent advertising campaigns, the company suspends advertisers' accounts only when it is 95% certain that the activity is fraudulent. In most cases, Meta increases advertising costs for suspected advertisers, which leads to additional revenue when they continue to purchase ads.