Liam Walsh
Liam is a Co-Director at Intelligency and heads up the agency's Digital Intelligence & Paid Social activity. Over the last decade, he has worked with brands from the world of sports such as Premier League clubs to entertainment such as Channel 4 and Disney.
Meta Ads have become one of the most powerful tools in digital marketing. With billions of users across Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, the platform gives advertisers an unmatched ability to reach highly targeted audiences. Brands love Meta because it offers precise targeting, flexible budgets, and detailed performance data. It’s where small businesses and global brands alike can connect with people who are most likely to buy, click, or sign up.
Revenue from risky ads
According to internal documents reported by Reuters, Meta projected that around 10% of its 2024 revenue came from advertising linked to scams and banned products, roughly 16 billion US dollars. The report also revealed that Meta served an estimated 15 billion “high-risk” scam ads to users every day. That’s a staggering volume of potentially fraudulent content passing through one of the world’s biggest ad systems.
A cautious approach to enforcement
Meta’s internal systems reportedly only banned advertisers when it was at least 95% sure they were running scams. If the platform wasn’t completely certain, it often allowed the ads to continue running but charged those advertisers higher auction prices. The idea was to discourage bad actors financially, but it also meant that some fraudulent campaigns stayed live longer than they should have.
Mounting global pressure
Meta’s platforms have been linked to a significant share of online fraud worldwide. In the US, company data suggested that its apps were involved in about one-third of all successful scams. In the UK, regulators found Meta products were responsible for 54% of payment-related scam losses in 2023, more than every other social platform combined.
Balancing profits and integrity
While Meta has publicly committed to fighting fraud, the documents suggest a business still carefully balancing revenue and regulation. In early 2025, its review teams were reportedly told not to make enforcement decisions that would cost more than 0.15% of the company’s total revenue. Meta has since set goals to reduce scam-related ad income, aiming to bring it down from 10.1% in 2024 to 7.3% by the end of 2025. For marketers, the findings are a reminder that platform safety isn’t guaranteed. Brand protection, regular account reviews, and transparent reporting
