Visitors stand in front of screens displaying the Meta logo during a launch event at the corporate offices of Meta in Berlin on June 6, 2023. (Credit: AFP)
Israeli companies are struggling globally to attract customers, according to documents leaked by Meta whistleblowers to Drop Site News. In a report published Monday, the U.S.-based outlet, founded by former Intercept co-editor-in-chief Jeremy Scahill and former HuffPost and Intercept Washington bureau chief Ryan Grim, revealed that Meta data shows an increase — in the billions — in advertising costs for Israeli companies seeking to reach customers on platforms such as Facebook and Instagram.
Amid growing international backlash against Israel's devastating war against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, Israeli companies are finding themselves needing to spend more and more on advertising in an attempt to bring potential customers to their websites, while Internet users are engaging with them less and less.
So far, in 2025, the number of clicks Israeli companies have had on their advertisements is only 39.2 percent of their recorded total in 2023, which explains why Israeli firms must now pay more than double in advertising costs to lure customers.
The leaked data from Meta illustrates the trend through a metric known as “cost-per-click,” or CPC, which represents the dollar amount firms have to pay to get a potential customer to click on its ads — a figure that is then used to assess how much of its advertising expense is being successfully translated into revenue.
According to the documents seen by Drop Site, between 2023 and 2025, the CPC for Israeli companies increased by a staggering 155.3 percent, rising from $0.094 to $0.24 required to drive an individual potential customer to the website of an Israeli firm. This rise in costs is not reflected in any general upward trend. Israel was the country with the steepest increase in CPC costs, with the next two highest being Iraq and Pakistan.
On average, Israeli companies has spent a total of between $1.8 and $1.9 billion on advertising across Meta platforms since 2023, with the effectiveness of this advertising spending rapidly decreasing. Several of the firms listed on the Meta documents are on boycott lists, Drop Site added.
Meta is also losing revenue from Israel as overall global consumer sentiment turns sharply against Israeli brands. There's been an eight percent decline in Israeli ad spending during the 2023-24 period.
Rubio condemns Iran's 'outrageous' attacks on Kuwait
