Meta estimated that roughly 10 per cent of its 2024 revenue, about $16 billion, came from online ads promoting scams and banned products, according to internal documents cited by Reuters on Thursday.

The report said those ads included promotions for fraudulent investment and e-commerce schemes, illegal online casinos, and prohibited medical products.

The internal papers also detailed Meta’s efforts to track the spread of deceptive advertising across Facebook and Instagram.

Meta reported more than $164.5 billion in total revenue for 2024.

The company said last week that its third-quarter sales rose 26% year-over-year to $51.24 billion and that it raised the lower end of its annual expense forecast by $2 billion to support major investments in artificial intelligence.

the report showed that a December 2024 internal document showed Meta generates about $7 billion annually from “higher risk” scam ads—promotions that are overtly deceptive.

Another document estimated that users are shown around 15 billion of these ads each day.

A Meta spokesperson said the company “takes aggressive action” against scam and fraud ads on its platforms.

“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,” the spokesperson said.