Internal projections reveal ads are a core long-term strategy, not an experiment. OpenAI expects "free user monetization" to generate $110 billion through 2030, with average revenue per user (ARPU) growing from $2 to $15. Gross margins are targeted at 80-85%, mirroring Meta's highly profitable ad business.

Meta's Reels platform has achieved a staggering $50 billion run rate, placing it remarkably close to the entire U.S. television advertising market's projected $60 billion for 2024. This demonstrates the massive scale shift from traditional to social media advertising.

Internal Meta documents show the company knowingly accepts that its scam-related ad revenue will lead to regulatory fines. However, it calculated that the profits from this fraud ($3.5B every six months from high-risk ads alone) 'almost certainly exceeds the cost of any regulatory settlement'.

Rather than simply failing to police fraud, Meta perversely profits from it by charging higher rates for ads its systems suspect are fraudulent. This 'scam tax' creates a direct financial incentive to allow illicit ads, turning a blind eye into a lucrative revenue stream.

Unlike competitors who would struggle to introduce ads into AI chat, Meta's user base is already accustomed to ads in their feeds. This gives Meta a unique advantage to monetize a proactive consumer AI agent that can surface sponsored suggestions for shopping or travel without creating user friction.

Many social media and ad tech companies benefit financially from bot activity that inflates engagement and user counts. This perverse incentive means they are unlikely to solve the bot problem themselves, creating a need for independent, verifiable trust layers like blockchain.

After an internal team successfully slashed problematic ad revenue from China by 50%, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg personally intervened. Following his input, the effective anti-scam team was disbanded, as its success was negatively impacting the company's $18 billion in Chinese ad sales.

Meta is directly addressing the long-standing issue of low-quality leads from its ad platform. New verification options, including requiring a work email or SMS confirmation, allow advertisers to filter spam and unqualified submissions. This improves lead quality, reduces wasted spend, and makes the platform more viable for B2B and high-value campaigns.

While 10% of Meta's revenue comes from fraud, the company's anti-fraud team was blocked from taking any action that would impact more than 0.15% of total revenue. This minuscule 'revenue guardrail' was an explicit internal directive to ensure anti-fraud efforts would not succeed.