Tag Archives: Mark Zuckerberg

Why Is Meta Letting Chinese Ad Scammers Rip Off Its Users For $3 Billion/Year?

by doctorads

Well the Doc opened up the old mailbag today and here’s what poured out.

Dear Dr. Ads,

There I was, minding my own business and checking out Brian Stelter’s Reliable Sources newsletter, when I came across this item about the latest tech world ad scam.

‘Meta tolerates rampant ad fraud from China…’
“…to safeguard billions in revenue.” That’s the headline on a new Reuters investigation by Jeff Horwitz and Engen Tham that relies heavily on internal documents. The reporters found that Meta “decided to accept high levels of fraudulent advertisements from China” as the company “wanted to minimize ‘revenue impact’ caused by cracking down on the scams.”

WhatsApp with that, Doc? Strip-mining our data isn’t enough for Mark Suckaberg? Now he’s running Fleecebook and Instascam for Chinese fraudsters?

– Met-ad-verse

Dear M-a-v,

Let’s start with some backstory.

Last week we noted that Meta was one of the tech companies (along with Cash App, Coinbase, Match Group, and Ripple) involved in the Tech Against Scams Coalition, which had just launched a Potemkin marketing campaign purportedly to help consumers identify and avoid online fraudsters. It lasted about as long as a standard WhatsApp message, and had slightly less impact.

We also linked to Jeff Horwitz’s November Reuters piece reporting that “Meta internally projected late last year that it would earn about 10% of its overall annual revenue – or $16 billion – from running advertising for scams and banned goods, internal company documents show.”

Now comes this Reuters follow-up piece that zeroes in on the China connection to Meta’s ad-scam haul. In that case, fraudulent advertising generated not 10%, but 19% of the company’s revenues, or $3 billion of its $18 billion Chinese take in 2024.

Meta’s own internal audits showed that “Meta believed China was the country of origin of roughly a quarter of all ads for scams and banned products on Meta’s platforms worldwide.”  The company set up an anti-fraud team that “slashed the problematic ads by about half during the second half of 2024 – from 19% to 9% of the total advertising revenue coming from China.”

Then Meta Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg weighed in.

“As a result of Integrity Strategy pivot and follow-up from Zuck,” a late 2024 document notes, the China ads-enforcement team was “asked to pause” its work. Reuters was unable to learn the specifics of the CEO’s involvement or what the so-called “Integrity Strategy pivot” entailed.

But after Zuckerberg’s input, the documents show, Meta disbanded its China-focused anti-scam team. It also lifted a freeze it had introduced on granting new Chinese ad agencies access to its platforms. One document shows that Meta shelved yet other anti-scam measures that internal tests had indicated would be effective.

So, to recap . . .

1) Meta knows.

2) Meta don’t care.

The Doc’s diagnosis: Mark Suckaberg never met a corner he wasn’t happy to cut. Why would he change now?

Shouldn’t Mark Zuckerberg Just Set His Super Bowl Ad Money on Fire?

by doctorads

Well the Doc opened up the old mailbag today and here’s what poured out.

Dear Dr. Ads,

It’s well known that Meta (a.k.a. Facebook/a.k.a. Instagram) is getting its ads kicked by TikTok and even Snapchat nowadays. So what is Mark (Data) Suckerberg doing about it?

Running a Super Bowl ad.

As Todd Wasserman reports at MediaPost, Meta’s big game ad will follow a fourth-quarter earnings report that included the company’s first-ever quarterly decline in daily active users.

Meta’s Super Bowl teaser, via Anomaly, features a shot of a virtual hangout called Questy’s. Questy’s looks a little worn, as the ad shows the restaurant at night, when it’s empty and dark (except for a flickering neon sign).

The ad is a direct reference to the Oculus Quest 2 headset, which Meta released last fall. Questy’s is actually a virtual hangout in Oculus that is a portal to games and other activities.

The music in the ad is a callback to TV themes of the 1980s that advance a good-timey virtual reality experience and a sign that Meta wants to leave behind the Internet and social media and instead usher users into a virtual world.

Empty restaurant? TV theme music of the 1980s? That’s what Zuck brings in the wake of last week’s knee-buckling 26% plunge in Meta’s share price, which vaporized $237 billion in market value?

Is this just wish-casting, Doc? Or what?

– MetAverse

Dear MetAverse,

For starters, here’s the teaser ad in question.

A 60-second version of the ad is scheduled to run in the first quarter of the Super Bowl at a cost of roughly $13 million, which is, of course, lunch money to Zuckerberg.

Problem is, he’s getting his lunch eaten by TikTok, as the Wall Street Journal’s Salvador Rodriguez reported yesterday.

Meta Faces Uphill Battle Against TikTok

Amid a dismal earnings report, Facebook parent Meta Platforms Inc. on Wednesday highlighted its short-video product Reels as a bright spot and perhaps its best bet to kick-start flagging growth.

The challenge is that in the increasingly important fight for video dominance, Meta faces a heavyweight rival that is only getting stronger.

While Meta executives said Reels is now the company’s fastest-growing content format, ByteDance Ltd.’s TikTok is growing even faster. It was the most-downloaded app of 2021, and overtook Meta’s Instagram in popularity among coveted young users.

That makes a switch to Reels and away from TikTok a tough sell for a lot of advertisers and creators.

Especially when you consider these numbers in the WSJ piece: “In 2021, TikTok reached 63% of Americans between the ages of 12 and 17 weekly, up from 50% a year prior, according to a November survey by Forrester. Instagram, meanwhile, declined from 61% in 2020 to 57% in 2021. Other industry data shows similar trends.”

So, to conclude: How many Americans between the ages of 12 and 17 do you think will be riveted to a TV screen for next Sunday’s Super Bowl broadcast?

Yeah, us too.

Not to be repetitive, but memo to Zuck: You should have just set that $13 million on fire.