What this report covers
This report examines the impact of enforcement against cosmetic surgery clinics based abroad who are advertising in an irresponsible manner in paid for ads on Meta between December 2024 and December 2025. It highlights encouraging improvements in compliance levels after these actions.
Key findings
- CAP captured more than 4,000 paid ads for cosmetic surgery procedures across two phases of monitoring.
- Common issues included “mommy makeover” packages that exploited body insecurities in new mothers and time-limited offers that pressured people into making rushed decisions about surgery.
- Following targeted enforcement action, compliance improved during the monitoring period.
- Compliance rose from 61.4% to 86.9% in Phase 1 and from 41.7% to 70.6% in Phase 2.
Compliance action taken
We contacted advertisers responsible for ads that breached the CAP Code and instructed them to remove or amend problematic claims. Across both monitoring phases, several clinics amended or removed non-compliant ads following our intervention. Where advertisers did not respond, the issues were escalated through Meta.
We will continue working with the advertisers identified in Phase 2 to address outstanding compliance issues.
CAP Enforcement Reports
CAP Enforcement Reports explain the actions CAP takes to address non-compliance in specific sectors. They also show how these actions affect overall compliance rates.
These reports use insights from our AI-based Active Ad Monitoring system (AAMs) to track ads in certain sectors.