Meta Q2 2024 Earnings for Marketers

Meta’s 2024Q2 earnings report came out and stocks went up. Numbers were good.

But what’s that mean for marketers?

1. More automated ads in the future

Initially, Meta ads needed you to (1) create the ad and (2) select audience segments to deliver the ad.

Now AI can optimize the audience selection for you. You don’t need to fine tune the segment anymore. When all advertisers can access the same delivery optimizations, the ad creation becomes a lot more difficult.

This is the step Meta is focusing on next, ad creation. The goal is to make running an ad as simple as possible. Generative AI can automate creatives. Or as Zuckerberg said,

”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”

2. Less China-based advertisers demand

China-based advertisers spend a lot on Meta ads. Meta has disclosed 10% of ad spend comes from china-based advertisers. For example, Temu, reportedly, spent $2BN in 2023.

During this earnings call, China-based advertisers were called out twice saying growth rates will decrease. But why does this matter for marketers?

Because ads is an auction system. If there’s less demand then costs go down. There was even speculation that Temu single handedly caused Meta ad costs to increase last year.

3. Increased video ad monetization

Facebook made a massive update to their video recommendation system. Unifying Reels, Live, and longer videos. 

The update has led to more user engagement on Facebook. Expect more efficient overall video ad monetization like how Reels has become better monetized.

4. Young adults on Facebook

Facebook’s original users are now grown ups. Newer apps, including Instagram, have been capturing the younger demographic. The Facebook app is going through an identity crisis. 

There’s been an effort to reverse this trend. 

More and more 18-29 year olds in the US and Canada are using Facebook. Specifically, Groups and Marketplace.

5. AI Agents

The most exciting news for us at 1send is the continued updates on business messaging. A big barrier for business messaging is labor. It’s expensive to have someone manage the messaging inbox. It’s one of the reasons that business messaging is working in low cost labor countries.

It’s not hard to imagine Meta AI being used to represent specific businesses. Or as Zuckerberg says: 

“Over time I think that just like every business has a website, a social media presence, and an email address, in the future I think that every business is also going to have an AI agent that their customers can interact with”

Bonus

Q: What’s the deal with Marketplace? 

A: Meta seems content to have it just drives young adult engagement, which increases ad impressions on Facebook. It can tie in with Shops ads.

Q: What’s going on with Threads?

A: Not much updates on Threads besides user growth numbers, 200M.

Q: What’s going on with Metaverse?

A: Still a huge cost. However, they’ve been able to pivot to AI like in the Ray-ban glasses. In the future it seems, Meta will be better off partnering instead of creating new products in-house like the Portal.

Q: Were there questions about open-sourcing Llama?

A: Yes. Every quarter Zuckerberg talks about it. Open-source lets Meta innovate faster and the scale gives them leverage to define the ecosystem. Same thing happened when they open-sourced React and PyTorch