The news: Meta announced today updates to its Brand Rights Protection product to combat an influx of scam ads across its social platforms.

• Meta will now give brands using Brand Rights Protection the option to report scam ads at scale, regardless of whether the ads use the brand’s intellectual property. This feature includes ads that are suspected as scams or ads that are misleading and exploit a brand’s name without authorization.
• The company is also redesigning the takedown request process to shorten the steps necessary to remove a scam. The new Drafts tab (previously Requests) will now have subsections for different violation types: Copyright, counterfeit, impersonation, and trademark.
• Brands can now search or filter in the Reports tab with keywords, trademark and report owner names, and report IDs.

Strengthening scam prevention: The move comes shortly after The Wall Street Journal reported several incidents of scams on Instagram and Facebook going under the radar:

• A 2024 document cited by the Journal showed that Meta allowed advertisers to accumulate up to 32 strikes for financial fraud before the account was banned.
• A 2022 analysis found that 70% of new active advertisers on Instagram and Facebook were promoting scams, illicit goods, and low-quality products, a problem that has grown since.
• Businesses take the brunt of the fallout: One case saw an owner purchase 15 ads across Meta platforms, but Meta’s ad library showed over 4,400 ads using the company’s name and photos.

Our take: With social media’s vulnerability to ad fraud and proliferating concerns about brand safety causing some advertisers to reconsider spending, Meta’s update comes at a critical time. As AI makes ad scams easier and more sophisticated, Meta is taking steps to reassure advertisers that—while scams can’t be avoided in the AI age—it has the barriers in place to combat fraud and safeguard brand image.

But even with Meta’s updated measures to protect brands, marketers must still be proactive in combatting evolving fraud tactics.

• Regularly validating traffic sources is critical to detect suspicious patterns early on before scams cause legitimate brand damage.
• Third-party ad verification tools will continue proving valuable for detecting fraud by identifying bot traffic, monitoring viewability, and validating impressions and clicks.