‘This is going to be a very big deal’: Zuckerberg steps out AI advertising plan after delivering massive Q2 results
Meta has seen its advertising revenue skyrocket as Zuckerberg points to the company’s future in artificial intelligence.
The social media company reported second-quarter revenue growth of 22%, to US$39.1 billion (A$60.2b), with advertising revenue also up 22%, to hit US$38.3 billion (A$59b). This compares well to Google’s 11% advertising revenue jump, as reported last week by parent company Alphabet.
Net income for Meta jumped a staggering 73% to US$13.47 billion (A$20.74b), while total ad impressions increased by 10%, as did the average price per ad.
The online commerce vertical was the largest contributor to year-over-year ad revenue growth, followed by gaming and entertainment and media
CFO Susan Li said during an investor call that within ad revenue, “the online commerce vertical was the largest contributor to year-over-year growth, followed by gaming and entertainment and media”.
On an advertiser geography basis, total revenue growth was strongest in Asia-Pacific, with 28% growth, though this figure was well below the first quarter growth rate of 41%.
“Impression growth was mainly driven by Asia-Pacific and Rest of World,” Li said.
“Pricing growth was driven by increased advertiser demand, in part due to improved ad performance. This was partially offset by impression growth, particularly from lower-monetising regions and surfaces.”
Meta provided revenue guidance for the third quarter of between US$38.5 billion to US$41 billion.
CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that “more than 3.27 billion people use at least one of our apps each day”, noting that Threads is about to hit 200 million monthly active users. Talk soon turned to AI, with Zuckerberg laying out how it will amplify their advertising offering.
“AI is also going to significantly evolve our services for advertisers in some exciting ways,” he said.
“It used to be that advertisers came to us with a specific audience they wanted to reach — like a certain age group, geography, or interests. Eventually we got to the point where our ads system could better predict who would be interested than the advertisers could themselves.
“But today advertisers still need to develop creative themselves. In the coming years, AI will be able to generate creative for advertisers as well — and will also be able to personalise it as people see it. Over the long term, advertisers will basically just be able to tell us a business objective and a budget, and we’re going to go do the rest for them.
“We’re going to get there incrementally over time, but I think this is going to be a very big deal.”
Will Easton, managing director of Meta ANZ said: “AI continues to drive innovation across the whole business,” adding that “Australia and New Zealand were some of the first countries outside of the US to launch Meta AI, and user engagements across our Family of Apps has never been stronger particularly with young adults on Facebook.
“We look forward to share more exciting products with our users and partners in the near future.”
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