Leaked Data From Meta Reveal Israeli Companies Are Struggling To Find Customers

For the year 2025, the Israeli government announced it would be earmarking an additional $150 million toward global public relations, an unprecedented increase in spending that comes alongside a striking collapse in perception for Israel around the world.

The cost of that collapse, it turns out, can be measured. Meta, which owns both Instagram and Facebook, is the primary way that many companies reach customers. The cost to earn the eyeballs of a new customer by advertising through Meta is known as CPC, or cost-per-click. The lower a company’s CPC, the less it has to spend to attract new customers. The more it has to spend, the less viable a business becomes.

A review of leaked data from Meta, provided to us by company whistleblowers, shows that Israeli companies since 2023 are finding it increasingly difficult everywhere around the world to attract new customers, leading to advertising-cost increases in the billions.

We also just posted the translated audio of an extraordinary interview just given by former Israeli PM Yair Lapid, who is often discussed as a more humane, centrist alternative to Benjamin Netanyahu. Give it a listen and see if you agree with that label.

Over the weekend we finally got a response from the Israeli military to our investigation into one unit’s use of a 63-year-old Palestinian man as a human shield for three straight months. You can read that here.

—Ryan Grim

Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images.

Leaked Data From Meta Reveals Israeli Companies Are Struggling To Find Customers

Story by Murtaza Hussain, Waqas Ahmed, and Ryan Grim

There has been a staggering decline in the effectiveness of the billions of dollars spent on advertising by Israeli companies across Meta’s platforms, according to confidential internal data from the social media giant obtained by Drop Site News. As a result, amid growing international backlash against the Israeli government’s genocide in the Gaza Strip, Israeli firms are being forced to spend more and more to drive potential customers to their websites online, while seeing decreased engagement from users.

The growing marketing costs for Israeli brands, provided to Drop Site by internal whistleblowers at Meta, put specific numbers on the increasing toxicity of Israel’s international reputation. The data are broken down into a number of categories, showing the total amount spent by Israeli companies on advertising year-over-year since 2023, the amounts spent by other countries each year over that time, the average cost of driving individual user engagement, the top consumer countries for Israeli advertisements, and the top 40 firms from Israel advertising on Meta platforms by amount of total ad-spend.

The metric known as “cost-per-click,” or CPC, is critical for online advertisers. The CPC 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. Meta did not respond to a request for comment.

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 increase is far from matching any general upward trend; Israel was the country with the highest increase in CPC expense year-over-year between 2023 and 2024, the data shows, with the next two highest countries being Iraq and Pakistan. On average Israeli companies spent a total of between $1.8 and $1.9 billion on advertising across Meta platforms between those years, with the effectiveness of this advertising spending rapidly decreasing.

The top Israeli firms spending on Meta platforms include an eclectic mix of gaming companies, IT services firms, content marketing companies, and brick-and-mortar e-commerce suppliers. Several of the firms listed have been targeted by Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaigns. Others, while not overtly branded as Israeli, began identifying themselves with pro-Israel causes immediately after the October 7 attacks, including in their online social media posts and advertising. Many of the Israel-based content marketing companies listed as top advertisers on Meta do not disclose their clients in online documentation, suggesting that much of their advertising also may be centered around Israel. The Israeli government, as well as private sector pro-Israel groups, have announced major initiatives aimed at defending Israel’s reputation online over the past two years as criticisms of Israel’s actions in Gaza have continued.

As October turned to November and December in 2023, and the civilian casualty count soared , Israeli firms have sought to distance themselves from the country’s brand in their online advertisements in fear of such a backlash. The data from Meta suggests that these efforts have not been effective. So far, in 2025, the number of clicks Israeli companies have had on their advertisements is only 39.2% of their recorded total in 2023, which explains why Israeli firms must now pay more than double in advertising costs to lure customers.

This was true across almost all countries in which Israeli companies advertise. For U.S. users targeted by Israeli ads, the CPC between 2023 and 2024 increased by 93.32%, for the same period; CPC for non-Israeli companies advertising in the US went up by only 2.8%. Major increases in CPC were noted in the other top foreign countries targeted by Israeli advertisements, including the UK (163.22%), Canada (106.61%), Australia (115.87%), Germany (144.39%), Brazil (89.60%), France (102.68%), Mexico (39.91%), and India (40.32%). For comparison, the CPC for Israeli companies advertising to audiences in Israel went up by only 12%, which is likely explained by a sagging economy. Similarly, the CPC for global companies remained fairly consistent across all markets Meta advertises in. For example, the UK's CPC rate growth for non-Israeli companies was only 9.7%, Canada 8.83%, Australia 8%, Germany 10.9%, and similar for almost every country—showing a remarkable difference between CPC rate growth for Israel and CPC growth for other global companies.

The data from Meta offers a rare qualitative glimpse into the headwinds facing the Israeli economy after 20 months of war in the Gaza Strip that has resulted in formal accusations of genocide leveled against the state in international courts. Several of Meta’s major Israeli advertisers have also been listed by boycott and divestment campaigns online, while the official BDS movement calls for a divestment of Israeli companies in general.

Despite Meta’s unprecedented support for Israel during the war in Gaza, including its complicity in mass censorship of pro-Palestinian content and criticism of Israel, the internal data reveals that global consumer sentiment is turning sharply against Israeli brands and Meta’s revenue originating from Israel is going down—with already an 8% decline in Israeli ad spending during the 2023-24 period. As the genocide in Gaza continues, the increasing global refusal to engage with Israeli brands imposes an economic cost that even Meta’s censorship cannot erase.

Other rankings reflect the same stark collapse in Israel’s global brand. In the annual Global Soft Power Index report issued earlier this year by the London-based marketing consultancy Brand Finance, Israel fell to its lowest recorded score to date. “More than a year after the October 7 attack by Hamas on Israel and Israel’s invasion of Gaza in response, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict continues to heavily impact the nation’s global perceptions, evidenced by a sharp 42-place decline in reputation to 121st,” the report noted.

Amid growing backlash over plans stated by Israeli leaders to annex the Gaza Strip and expel or kill its population, European countries that had previously been supportive of the Israeli war effort have begun to threaten sanctions and other measures aimed at compelling Tel Aviv to stop the onslaught. The European Union and United Kingdom separately announced plans this month to suspend trade talks and review existing economic agreements in protest over Israeli actions.

Polls show that public opinion of Israel in the U.S. continues to decline. A Pew Research Center poll this April showed that 53% of Americans now hold an unfavorable view of Israel, up from 42% in March of 2022. The declines in favorability are particularly stark among younger Americans, with negative views much more strongly represented among the 18-49 age range and even 50% of self-identified Republicans in that category now stating that they are unfavorable towards Israel.

These decreases in favorability come despite gargantuan efforts being undertaken by the Israeli government to shape global public opinion. In late 2024, Israel’s Foreign Ministry budget for public diplomacy efforts was boosted by $150 million over currently existing amounts, even as the government implements cuts to social services to pay for defense and other expenditures. The country’s former central bank chief warned in late May could bring Israel's critical public sector infrastructure towards collapse. “Under the new budget, the Foreign Ministry will receive $150 million, on top of what it gets for its existing activities, for what’s officially known as public diplomacy, or hasbara in Hebrew,” a Times of Israel report on the boost in hasbara funding noted. “That sum is more than 20 times what such efforts have typically been allotted in past years.”