For Facebook’s parent company Meta Platforms, artificial intelligence (AI) will be a focus over the next year.
“In terms of investment priorities, in 2024, AI will surpass engineering. “This will be the biggest investment area for computing resources.”
Company’s The financial results and Mr. Zuckerberg’s comments state the following: Even as the company explores ways to incorporate AI more prominently into its ads manager and optimize images and text to make commerce more seamless for advertisers, the core The advertising business and suite of apps are being revitalized.
Focus on AI
Against this backdrop, the company plans to deprioritize at least some non-AI projects in favor of projects focused on emerging and advanced technologies and hire talent for AI roles next year.
Q&A session with analysts and CFO Susan Lee In response to a query about the continued use of AI in advertising and new use cases, he said: Once it’s complete, we plan to integrate it directly into Ads Manager.
“We’ve made them part of our Advantage+ solution. Some of the things we want to highlight that we’re rolling out this quarter are text variations, which generate multiple versions of ad text based on an advertiser’s original copy; This helps advertisers highlight the selling points of their products and services.”
Zuckerberg said AI-driven feed recommendations continue to have a growing impact on increased engagement, adding that time spent on Facebook has increased by 7% and time spent on Instagram has increased by 6%.
“AI tools for advertisers are also delivering results with Advantage+ Shopping campaigns, with execution rates reaching $10 billion,” he said. AI is driving down the costs of commerce and messaging and will be a new focus next year, he said.
Elsewhere, Reels has seen a 40% increase in time spent on Instagram since launch. As Zuckerberg said, the service is “net neutral” to the company’s overall ad revenue.
“Reels has graduated from that initial effort to become a core part of our app,” Zuckerberg said.
Increased app usage
Of course, the starting point for more ambitious long-term plans for AI and other relatively new initiatives is the breadwinner business: the apps themselves. Zuckerberg and Chief Financial Officer Lee said Facebook has 2.1 billion daily active users, an increase of 5%, or 101 million, from last year. The number of monthly active users increased by 91 million, or 3%, compared to last year.The total revenue of the company’s app family is 33.9 billion dollars, an increase of 24% from the same period last year.
Advertising revenue was $33.6 billion, an increase of 21% on a constant currency basis.
“Among advertising revenues, the online commerce industry contributed the most to year-on-year growth, followed by the consumer goods industry,” Lee said. [consumer packaged goods] And games. Online commerce and gaming benefited from strong spending by Chinese advertisers, which also reached customers in other markets. ”
“Other revenue” within the app’s hall of fame rose 53% to $293 million. This, according to Lee, is driven by “strong growth in business messaging revenue from our WhatsApp business platform.”
More than three months after its launch, Zuckerberg said Threads has “just under 100 million monthly actives right now.”
Reality Lab loses billions of dollars
And in a nod to the Metaverse, Zuckerberg noted that the company is testing Horizon for phones, tablets, and PCs. This is “an important part of how we build a metaverse across different devices.” The company’s financial results revealed that its Reality Labs division, which handles Metaverse efforts, posted an operating loss of $3.7 billion, and sales fell 26% year over year to $210 million.
Investors sent the stock down about 3% in after-hours trading after Mr. Lee said there was still “volatility” in the “macro situation” and that earnings trends could become uncertain.
