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European social media scam ads generate nearly £3.8bn in 2025

Target Trend
First reported
Last updated
Happening score
H score 22
1 unique sources, 1 articles

Summary

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European social media platforms generated nearly £3.8bn from scam ads in 2025, showing a large fraud surface that can expose users to money loss, personal-data theft, and account takeover. The trend covered 11 European markets and about 10% of 993 billion ad impressions, signaling that malicious paid content is embedded at scale across major platforms.

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Timeline

  1. 09.02.2026 12:30 1 articles · 3mo ago

    Juniper Research quantifies Europe-wide scam-ad revenue

    Initial Disclosure

    Juniper Research quantified malicious paid posts across Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, X and LinkedIn in 11 European markets, finding that European social media users saw 993 billion ad impressions in 2025 and that about 10% were linked to scams, generating nearly £3.8bn ($5.2bn) in platform revenue. The report warned that scam ads can erode trust, cause money loss, and expose sensitive financial and personal information, and it called for stronger detection, enforcement, and user education as total impressions could reach 1.4 trillion by 2030.

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