Here’s the uncomfortable truth for anyone running paid social right now: the biggest brand-safety risk on Meta isn’t that your budget gets “stolen” by fraud (though 50%+ or more may), it’s that your good ads are forced to live in a neighborhood overrun by scams. That adjacency erodes trust in the entire environment, and some of that distrust rubs off on you.
Reuters’ investigation reports Meta internally projected that roughly 10% of its 2024 ad revenue (about $16B) came from ads for scams or banned goods. That’s not a rounding error; that’s a signal to every legitimate advertiser about the context your brand is buying into.
As someone who’s spent years in digital, here’s what that means in practice:
1) Trust drag. When users are repeatedly exposed to scammy creative in a feed, it conditions them to question everything in that feed, including your perfectly legitimate offer. Even if your ad is clean, the environment is noisy and suspect. Industry analysts have been warning that rising online scams are reshaping consumer trust in digital communications, especially for newer or unfamiliar brands. That hits performance before the first click.
2) Hidden tax on performance. You’ll spend more to overcome skepticism: higher frequency to break through doubt, more creative to rebuild credibility, more community management because comments fill with “is this real?” That’s real CAC inflation caused by environment, not targeting.
3) Measurement and brand-safety overhead. The more you toggle brand-safety controls, exclusion lists, and third-party verification, the more you constrain scale (and pay for the privilege). Meanwhile, the platform’s enforcement has, per the reporting, tolerated suspect advertisers as long as models weren’t 95% certain, even imposing “penalty rates” rather than removals. That’s a misaligned incentive problem, not a one-off glitch.
4) Reputational exposure. If a user screenshots your ad sitting three posts away from a scam, the nuance is lost. What people remember is where they saw you. Regulators are also leaning in. Even when Meta tightens rules in certain markets, the pattern is reactive, not preventative, which keeps the ambient risk high for everyone buying the inventory.
So where does that leave serious local advertisers, roofers, remodelers, HVAC, and window pros who need response and trust?
This is where I’ve become an unapologetic champion of direct mail (and if you’ve been reading this blog, you know I’ve been making this case for a while). Mail gives you brand-safe adjacency by design. There’s no auction placing your ad next to a bad actor. You control the list, the layout, the timing, and the call-to-action. In our programs, Card Pack across our Atlanta zones and the monthly Atlanta New Movers Showcase, we can show you exactly which households received your piece, then match that to tracked calls and QR visits, AND you're included in a club of nothing but vetted, trustworthy, home service businesses. It’s a clean delivery chain that’s easy to explain to an owner who cares about real households, not just impressions. And in a climate where the world’s largest social platform is acknowledging a massive scam footprint in its revenue mix, the context of a high-quality, physical mailer becomes a competitive advantage.
Bottom line: keep using digital where it’s working, but be honest about the brand-safety drag you’re paying for on crowded social feeds. Then balance your plan with channels that earn trust on contact. If you want help mapping your best homeowner segments and integrating call tracking so you can see the lift, that’s our wheelhouse, and it’s why more of our clients are re-weighting budgets toward mail right now.
