The market may be rough, but Meta keeps chugging along.
Yesterday, the company reported Q1 earnings of $42.3 billion, up 16% from $36.4 billion in the same quarter of last year. Of course, almost all of that came from advertising, with $41.3 billion in ad revenue. The average price per ad rose also 10% year-over-year, an improvement over the 6% increase Meta saw in Q1 2024.
On the earnings call, as if you didn’t know, CEO Mark Zuckerberg emphasized that AI is Meta’s central focus right now. “The major theme right now, of course, is how AI is transforming everything we do,” he said, noting that “improved advertising” is one of five major opportunities AI will help unlock.
“Our goal is to make it so that any business can basically tell us what objective they’re trying to achieve—like selling something or getting a new customer—and how much they’re willing to pay for each result,” he added. “And then we just do the rest.”
Why This Matters:
Zuck’s “and then we just do the rest” is fascinating, especially in light of yesterday’s Google PMax announcement—where “just doing the rest” has also prompted advertisers, agencies, and even, in some cases, regulators to ask for more transparency around what that actually means. That “do the rest” framing also speaks to a broader agentic AI focus, which Zuckerberg noted on the call, saying Meta’s work in AI-powered advertising, from creative to targeting, “is really redefining what advertising is into an AI agent.”
So, the dynamic of handing over control while still seeing streamlined workflows and strong performance will continue to play out for Meta, Google, and others. The industry wants automation but not necessarily “blind” automation.
Zuckerberg also made sure to emphasize performance, which is key in a down market. He highlighted Meta’s efforts to “drive results that are optimized for each business’ objectives and the way they measure value.” Here’s that part of the call:
“Last, we continue to evolve our ads platform to drive results that are optimized for each business’ objectives and the way they measure value. One example of this is our Incremental Attribution feature, which enables advertisers to optimize for driving incremental conversions, or conversions we believe would not have occurred without an ad being shown. We’re seeing strong results in testing so far, with advertisers using Incremental Attribution in tests seeing an average 46% lift in incremental conversions compared to their business-as-usual approach. We expect to make this available to all advertisers in the coming weeks.”
This is what advertisers want to hear as dollars likely continue to shift over to performance campaigns and more scrutinize ad spend for value.
Experts React:
It’s not necessarily an “expert” but, hey, the market responded positively to the report:
If you still need one expert’s take, here’s Eric Seufert’s quick reaction from X, where talks about a softer tariff impact, possibly, on Meta:
Our Take:
This was a good quarter for Meta. One interesting takeaway—and possibly an area of concern—is the sharp slowdown in ad impression growth. Global ad impressions rose just +5% in Q1 2025, down from +20% in Q1 2024, signaling that Meta may be nearing saturation in ad load across its platforms. With impression growth flattening in every region, the company will need to lean more heavily on pricing, AI-driven performance (presumably), and new formats to sustain momentum (Reels? Ads in Threads?).
