Barbara Ortutay’s Post

The "why" is not particularly surprising here. Sure, a lot of it has to do with the size of the company and resources to be the most nimble. However, there's one line in here that really stood out to me. "Snap has recently tried to distance itself from the broader social media universe and has pitched itself as more of a messaging company, Enberg said." I could be wrong, but it seems like a mistake to decide your company is something to the exclusion of what it really is. Snap is a social media company. It's also a messaging company. It's also an entertainment platform. It's also a number of other things. Not to mention, trying to distance from Meta by calling yourself a messaging company discounts that Meta has an entire messaging app. There's no distancing from this megalodon. It surprises me to see such a prominent brand not have a handle on their true identity, and even more surprisingly, limit the scope of who they truly are. There's a case for hyper-specialization to differentiate your brand, but I don't think that's possible in the league they're in. Better to embrace who they are and focus their hyper-specialization on what could make their advertising capabilities unique from Meta and others. https://lnkd.in/gJvMKbap

Meta soared past analyst expectations in its third-quarter earnings report, solidifying investor confidence that the previously embattled tech company is out of the woods after several volatile years. CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the company enjoyed its “highest operating margin in two years.” The company reported a third-quarter revenue of $34.15 billion, beating the expected $33.56 billion, up 23 percent year-over-year. Shares jumped in after-hours trading, with results boosting investor confidence after Meta spent several years in volatility as it attempted to restructure its business model and expand beyond the social media products it built its empire upon. That said, advertising remains its primary revenue driver. Zuckerberg said overall time spent on Facebook increased by 7 percent, and time spent on Instagram went up 6 percent “as a result of recommendation improvements” because of the company’s increased emphasis on algorithmic recommendation of content to users. Reels, Meta’s short-form video platform, has driven a 40 percent increase in time spent on Instagram since its launch and “continues to do very well,” Zuckerberg said, adding that he expected conversations with businesses, likely facilitated by AI, to be “the next pillar of our business”. Read the full report below. #Technology #Meta

Meta third-quarter revenue up by 23% Surging digital ad market and layoffs combine to give Facebook parent $11,6 billion in profit, more than twice what it was a year earlier. my question? is this a good way to double the profit by laying off #digitaladvertising #meta #facebookmarketing #facebookads #layoffs https://lnkd.in/dn9MJzqw

Meta reported Q3'23 earnings today with highest operating margin in two years. Exciting Highlights: 📈 The Meta community keeps growing: 3.9 billion people use at least one of our apps every month, an increase of +7% year-over-year. Asia-Pacific is the largest contributor to Facebook users and user growth - accounting for 43% and 45% of global Daily Active Users (DAU) and Monthly Active Users (MAU) respectively, and 53% and 49% of total DAU and MAU Y/Y growth respectively. 🪜 Reels continue to climb, driving more than 40% increase in time spent on Instagram since launch 💬 Business Messaging momentum with more than 600 million conversations between people and businesses happening every day. 🧵 Threads hit just under 100 million monthly actives. 💥 Gen AI rollouts: Meta AI, our new AI assistant; Emu, our new image creation model; Llama 2 (30 million downloads last month!); and an early alpha of Business AIs so every business can eventually have an AI to interface with customers. I’m grateful to our global brand partners who put their trust in our platforms and our teams. We will continue to work to be the best minute and best dollar businesses can spend to grow their businesses. #Meta https://lnkd.in/gjfz9-dR

Meta shares jumped in extended trading on Wednesday after the company beat Wall Street estimates for revenue and profit and issued a better-than-expected forecast for the current period. Investors are OK with Meta continuing to spend big money on artificial intelligence and virtual reality as long as the company's online advertising business continues to boom after recovering from a brutal 2022. As we explain today on CNBC: "Meta’s results point to continued share gains in the digital ad market, the company’s core business. Advertising revenue, which comes largely from the Facebook and Instagram apps, rose 22% from a year earlier. Last week, top rival Alphabet reported an 11% increase in Google ad sales, with YouTube missing estimates." Additionally, Pinterest gave weaker-than-expected guidance this week and pointed to softness within the food and beverage industry. The sheer size of Meta likely means that even if some industries pull back, the company has a big enough advertising base to pick up the slack. Meta has benefited from Chinese retailers helping lift its overall business, after all. Read more here on CNBC: https://lnkd.in/g9E92iTW

This chart tells quite a story about the recent fortunes of Meta, Snap and Pinterest. Meta's growth has been nothing short of enormous, while Snap has missed out on some opportunities, and Pinterest has seen steady and reliable growth. But what's really interesting is how each platform is doing in direct response advertising. Meta has long been the king of social media direct response advertising, and it doesn't look like that's going to change anytime soon. Snap is playing catch-up, but its direct response business is growing. Meanwhile, Pinterest's recent partnerships with Amazon and Google could help it become the direct conduit to sales that it was always meant to be. As I told Investors Business Daily's Ryan Deffenbaugh in the article where this chart appears, "The big are definitely getting bigger." It's clear that Snap and Pinterest are making moves to stay relevant and competitive. But the question remains: will either one be able to challenge Meta when it comes to direct response advertising? What do you think? #Meta #Snap #Pinterest #directresponse #advertising

2 Reasons Why Meta Performance Has Sucked This year. Recently came across two recent articles hinting at a few reasons why Meta's advertising has suffered. 1. Meta cut 20,000 jobs last year. A quick search reveals these were within the marketing, recruiting, and engineering (!) teams. They are a leaner company then they were even just a short while ago. https://lnkd.in/dn-KNKZ3 2. Meta has become so complex, that small changes lead to unintended, cascading issues and breaks on the platform. From January 2023 - April 2023, Meta saw 13 outages. From January 2024 - April 2024, Meta saw 33 outages... Nearly triple the amount in the same amount of time 1 year later. https://lnkd.in/dt6KxWjR While I love to put my conspiracy hat on and say Meta is overrun with bots... they don't care about advertisers performance... they just raise CPMs to continue making a profit... etc. I think it is far more likely that they simply have made a platform that is so complex, they are having an increasingly difficult time keeping it all from falling apart. Taken from the reddit user cmsciguy

Meta's recent financial success is driven by strong revenue growth, particularly in its digital advertising business, which saw a 22% increase. The company also issued a better-than-expected forecast for the current period. Investors are supportive of Meta's significant investments in AI and virtual reality, as long as the advertising business continues to perform well. AI investments are crucial for companies like Meta. As highlighted by Jonathan Vanian, Meta's strong performance in digital advertising, driven by AI, has reassured investors despite heavy spending. AI helps Meta stay competitive and innovate, ensuring continued growth in its core business. #EarningReports #AI #META

Meta has made over $1 million per day on political ads so far this year. (Honestly, I thought it would be more) Ad buying is going to get a lot tougher because of it. Why? Even though political spending is down vs. 2020, we’re still going to see an increase in ad demand this year, saturating the market. Meta may be a huge driver for your DTC brand, but it’s a good time to start experimenting with spreading your spend — I believe there will be more effective mediums, instead of having concentrated spend in one area. The law of diminishing returns will hit a lot sooner during the election year. Plan for it now or get caught scrambling later in the year when attention ramps up even more.

Today, Meta shared results from our third quarter of 2023 and we’re happy to see our community’s sustained growth – there are now more than 3.9 billion people who use at least one of our apps every month, an increase of 7% year-over-year. There continues to be a ton of innovation in AI, and brands are driving performance and efficiency across our platforms with this technology. In fact, more than half of our advertisers are using our Advantage+ Creative tools to optimize images and text in their ad creative. We’re also excited about the new possibilities that Generative AI will bring to both businesses and consumers. Reels and video content continues to grow and drive incremental engagement – videos account for more than half of the time spent on Facebook and Instagram. All the ranking and product improvements we've made have resulted in more than 40% increase in time spent on Instagram since launch. Business Messaging is another bright spot. There are more than 600 million conversations between people and businesses every day on our platforms. Paid messaging is showing a lot of potential and we believe that with the help of AI, we’ll be able to support commerce and customer engagement more efficiently at scale in the longer term. As always, I’m extremely thankful to our teams for their hard work, and to our partners for their trust. I can’t wait to harness this great momentum as we sprint through the final quarter and plan for next year! https://lnkd.in/dtPj6N_m