According to a report by Reuters on Thursday, Meta estimated that 10 percent of its total revenues in 2024, which is approximately $16 billion, was a result of running online advertisements of scams and prohibited products.
Such ads include promotions for “fraudulent e-commerce and investment schemes, illegal online casinos and the sale of banned medical products,” as per a Reuters report, which was compiled based on internal company documents.
Those documents revealed the efforts of the company to estimate the rate of fraudulent advertising on its apps, such as Facebook and Instagram.
Therefore, Meta projected over $164.5 billion in total sales in 2024. The company announced last week that its sales increased 26 percent.
year-over-year to $51.24 billion in the third quarter, and that it increased the lower end of the total expenses it expects to incur in the year by $2 billion as it continues to make huge investments in artificial intelligence.
The Reuters report indicated that the document of December 2024 revealed that each year, Meta rakes in about $7 billion in annualized sales of so-called “higher risk” scam ads, which are advertisements that are obviously deceptive.
The Reuters report quoted a separate document saying that every day, Meta displays to users an estimated 15 billion of these higher-risk scam ads.
Whilst some of the papers indicate that Meta is trying to minimize the number of fake advertisements on its site, the Reuters article also stated that other documents indicate that the company’s concerns are that its business estimates may be affected by the sudden elimination of the fake promotions.
One of the spokespersons of Meta claimed that the company is “aggressively” dealing with scam and fraud advertisements on its apps.
A spokesperson said in a statement that its estimation of 10 percent of the company’s 2024 ad sales were due to bunk ads was an approximation, not precise or final; actually, a later review showed that many of the adverts were not violative in any regard.
The spokesperson reported that “Unfortunately, the leaked documents present a selective view that distorts Meta’s approach to fraud and scams by focusing on our efforts to assess the scale of the challenge, not the full range of actions we have taken to address the problem.”
