Total ad impressions delivered across Meta’s apps increased by 10% year over year, while the average price per ad also rose by 10%.
AI is a focus once again in Meta’s Q2 earnings announcement, which shows the company posting solid increases in both users and revenue for the period.
First off, on users, Meta’s “Family Daily Active People” increased to 3.27 billion in Q2, up 7% year-over-year.
Meta added 30 million more users across its apps in the period, though we don’t know exactly where these users were active.
That’s because Meta now only reports its “Family” performance results, which incorporates users across Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp into a single measure. So we don’t have a specific breakdown of each, and therefore can’t report on those trends, but we do know that WhatsApp has seen a surge in U.S. usage of late.
Facebook and Instagram usage has been propped up by Meta’s evolving AI recommendations, which have seen more and more video clips from profiles that you don’t follow appearing in your feed. That’s annoyed some users, who are unhappy that they’re seeing these random updates, and not the posts from the accounts they’ve chosen to follow, but the numbers show that people are spending more time in each app as a result of being shown enticing video clips, based on their interests.
So whether you like them or not, AI recommendations are here to stay. At the same time, the Twitter-like Threads app has also continued to steadily gain traction among more user groups.
In terms of revenue, Meta brought in $39.07 billion for the quarter, an increase of 22% year-over-year.
A good sign for Meta is that it’s increasing its revenue intake in its key markets (U.S. and Europe), while also growing in new regions, as more people sign up. I guess, the negative of WhatsApp growing is that it provides fewer ad opportunities, but Meta’s clearly supplementing that with more revenue potential in its other apps.
Meta also reports that total ad impressions delivered across its apps increased by 10% year-over-year, while the average price per ad also rose by 10%.
So more ads, at higher prices, reflecting ongoing demand, which suggests that Meta’s going to be in good shape for some time yet. As such, it will also enable to keep investing in AI and VR, where it’s still sinking billions of dollars.
As you can see in this listing, Meta lost another $4.5 billion in its Reality Labs VR division in the period, as it continues to invest in both VR and AI projects. That puts it at a higher loss rate than it had last year, when it sunk a record $17 billion into the same.
Meta’s total costs and expenses rose 7% in Q2 to $24.22 billion, with its new AI data center weighing down its results.
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