Meta's Forecast on Fraudulent Advertising for 2024
In its internal documents, Meta has projected that around 10% of its total revenue in 2024, approximately $16 billion, will come from the placement of fraudulent advertisements and banned products. This was reported by Reuters.
These advertisements included promotions for fake investment and trading schemes, illegal online casinos, as well as the sale of prohibited medical products. The documents reviewed by Reuters reflected Meta's attempts to assess the scale of fraudulent advertising on its platforms, Facebook and Instagram.
Meta's total revenue in 2024 is expected to exceed $164.5 billion. Last week, the company reported a 26% year-over-year increase in its revenue for the third quarter, reaching $51.24 billion. Additionally, Meta raised its lower forecast for spending by $2 billion due to substantial investments in artificial intelligence.
Reuters also cited data from a document dated December 2024, which indicated an annual income of $7 billion from so-called "high-risk" fraudulent advertisements that are evidently misleading. Estimates suggested that around 15 billion such ads were shown to users daily.
While some documents indicated Meta's intention to reduce the number of fraudulent ads, other materials expressed the company's concern over the potential impact of a sudden removal of these ads on financial performance.
A Meta representative stated that the company is "aggressively" combating fraudulent advertising. He noted that the estimate of 10% of revenue was "approximate and overly broad," and further analysis showed that a significant portion of the ads did not violate any rules. He also emphasized that the leak of documents demonstrates only part of the company's efforts to assess the problem, not all measures taken to address it.
