‘It’s not like we knowingly have bad ads’: Meta on ad fraud, teen safety, and why AI will not replace agencies

‘It’s not like we knowingly have bad ads’: Meta on ad fraud, teen safety, and why AI will not replace agencies

From The Media Leader Podcast by The Media Leader

July 5, 2026 · 36 min · Season 5 · Episode 100

About this episode

The episode discusses Meta's advertising practices, scrutiny over ad fraud, and the implications of AI in the advertising industry.

Meta is growing at a remarkable rate. Already one of the world’s biggest global advertising businesses, the tech giant’s revenue grew 33% year-on-year to $56.3bn in Q1 alone. But while its dominance over the ad industry has crystallised, so has scrutiny into its business practices – and advertisers’ role in funding online harms through its platforms. Separate court cases in the US this year found that Meta has designed harmfully addictive platforms , and that it has misled users about platform safety and facilitated child sexual exploitation. A report from Reuters last November found that Meta knowingly earned 10% of its global turnover in 2024 from fraud and scam ads. At the LEAD conference in London this year, a spokesperson for Meta disputed the figure, but acknowledged that revenue from fraud and scam ads “might” have accounted for 3-4% of turnover – still equivalent to between $5bn and $7bn. And now there are concerns over the privacy implications of its line of smart glasses, which the company has positioned as the future of consumer electronics. Wired reported in June that Meta had quietly added facial recognition code into the product , before removing it after the…

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Organizations: Meta, Reuters, Wired

Places: London

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