Social media ads tied to scams cost shoppers $95 million in a single year, the FTC says

Shoppers who bought something after seeing an advertisement on social media reported losing more than $95 million to scams in 2025, the Federal Trade Commission says. The figure appears in an August consumer alert examining how little vetting most platforms apply to the ads that run in users’ feeds. It sits inside a far larger total: separate FTC data put overall reported losses to social media scams of every kind at $2.1 billion for the same year.

The pattern behind the $95 million in ad-driven losses

The loss figure covers a specific chain of events: a shopper sees a product ad while scrolling a feed, places an order directly through the ad or a linked storefront, and later finds the item never arrives, arrives counterfeit, or was billed by a business that does not exist. The agency treats the total as an undercount by nature, since it reflects only losses people chose to report rather than absorb quietly or flag solely to a bank or card issuer.

“In 2025, people reported losses of more than $95 million to scams that started when they ordered something after seeing an ad on social media,” the FTC wrote in its August alert. The agency said the ads themselves often impersonate recognizable brands, list counterfeit merchandise at a steep discount, or dress up work-from-home and investment pitches as ordinary product listings, all reaching shoppers through the same targeted-ad tools platforms sell to legitimate retailers.

Little vetting stands between an ad and a scam

Part of the problem, the agency says, is how little review most ads receive before reaching a feed. Platforms lean on automated systems and advertiser self-reporting rather than manual checks of every seller, which lets a fraudulent storefront run the same targeting tools as an established retailer: audience data built from browsing habits, past purchases, and stated interests, aimed at shoppers already inclined to buy the kind of item being pitched.

That targeting is what separates a social media scam ad from a mass email blast. A fraudulent listing does not need to reach everyone, only the narrow slice of users a platform’s ad system already flagged as likely buyers, which is part of why the FTC frames the $95 million as a platform-level gap rather than a story about any single bad actor. Reviews attached to a listing offer little protection on their own; the FTC’s separate guide on evaluating online reviews warns that a burst of five-star ratings posted in a short window, or an account created to post a single glowing review, are both signs the feedback propping up a storefront may be fake.

A wider $2.1 billion problem across the same platforms

Set against the ad-specific figure, a separate FTC data spotlight found $2.1 billion in reported losses to social media scams of every kind in 2025, up from $261 million in 2020, an eightfold increase. The agency’s analysis put investment schemes at $1.1 billion of that total, more than half, with romance scams adding another $298 million; the $95 million tied specifically to advertised orders sits inside the same overall count rather than on top of it.

Social media accounted for 28 percent of fraud reports that named a contact method and included a dollar loss in 2025, more than any other channel the FTC tracks, with Facebook drawing more reported losses than WhatsApp and Instagram combined. “Social media creates easy access to billions of people from anywhere in the world, making a scammer’s job easier at very little cost,” the FTC said in the press release accompanying the spotlight.

Steps the agency recommends before paying

Before paying for anything advertised on a social platform, the FTC recommends searching the seller’s name alongside terms like “scam” or “complaint” to check for a pattern of similar reports, and treating a business with no search history at all as reason for caution rather than reassurance.

The agency also tells shoppers to review and tighten the privacy and advertising settings on phones and browsers, since narrower ad permissions cut down on how closely a fraudulent listing can be aimed at a given account, and to file a report at ReportFraud.ftc.gov after any loss so the agency can track which ad networks and seller names keep recurring.

Shoppers who already paid have a narrow window to act. The FTC’s guidance for scam victims tells anyone who paid by credit or debit card to call the number on the back of the card and ask for a refund, tells payment-app users to contact the provider directly and request a reversal, and tells anyone who paid with a gift card to call the issuer immediately and keep the card and receipt, since every method depends on reporting the charge before the money settles.

The FTC has not broken out what share of the $95 million came from counterfeit goods versus investment or business-opportunity pitches dressed up as product ads, only that the total for 2025 topped $95 million inside a social media ad ecosystem the agency says still runs largely unchecked.

This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.

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