British social media users are being shown close to 200 scam adverts a month across the biggest platforms, new research has warned – earning the tech giants who show them hundreds of millions of pounds in the process.
A total of 95 billion scam ads were seen in total by UK users during 2025, culminating in an average of £1,258 in money lost per scam.
That figure was the second-highest in Europe, behind only Ireland (£1,292), while the companies hosting social media platforms generated an estimated £430m in revenue across the year from adverts targeting British consumers with scams.
The findings, by Juniper Research for banking app Revolut, show this is projected to rise to 137bn impressions per year by 2030 in the UK alone – and approaching 1.5 trillion across Europe as a whole.
Social media platforms researched in the study included Meta-owned Facebook and Instagram, as well as TikTok, Snapchat, X (formerly Twitter) and LinkedIn.
The report notes Meta announcing in November it had removed 134m scam ads from the platform, but also cites “leaked internal documents” which suggest the firm used keywords to hide scam ads from regulators and users, rather than actually solving the problem.
It is estimated that around one in 10 ads shown to UK-based social media users is a scam.
No details on the types of scams the adverts were involved in was presented in the research, but Independent Money has previously shown the most modern AI-based scams can include deepfakes, identity theft and fake retailers.
Additionally, the UK has seen a rise of scams purporting to be from government departments which can be tough to spot.
Separately, users have been warned over taking action based on finance influencers on social media, known as finfluencers.
Recent research from BrokerChooser shows over half of Brits (55 per cent) losing money after following financial advice on social media, while an analysis of 100 trading videos on TikTok found 80 per cent contained potentially misleading information.
Lloyds Bank, meanwhile, revealed their own research showing that the most frequent reported types of purchase scams from last year included vehicle and accessories, ticket scams including for concerts and even driving lessons or tests.
Liz Ziegler, fraud prevention director at Lloyds, said: “We saw a surge in ticket scam reports in 2025, as demand for events like Glastonbury, the Oasis tour and major football fixtures were sky-high, leading people to seek out hard-to-secure tickets where they could. Scammers then struck through dodgy social media posts, fake websites, and online marketplaces.”
Other research from Lloyds had previously shown that more than 90 per cent of Oasis ticket scams originated on Meta-owned platforms, such as Instagram and Facebook.
Earlier this year, Revolut launched a tool which can detect if a user’s account app is opened while they are on the phone and can alert them to potential fraudulent action such as impersonation scams.
