Meta’s Quarter Offers Signs of Hope on Ads

In tech, three is the new 30. Meta Platforms on Wednesday reported a 3% lift in revenue for the first quarter, the same revenue increase Alphabet reported for its first quarter on Tuesday. Increasing the top line by 3% is a far cry from the 25% to 30% quarterly growth Facebook’s owner once reported with monotonous regularity. But it’s a big improvement from reporting declines in revenue, as Meta had done for the previous three quarters.

More optimistically, Meta projected that revenue would grow between 2.4% and 11.1% in the second quarter. Some of that improvement is due to less foreign exchange pressure, which has hurt revenues across big tech over the past year or so. Even so, it suggests Meta’s digital ad business may have bottomed out and is starting to grow again. There were signs of that in the first quarter when ad revenue grew 4%, a contrast to a 4% drop in the fourth quarter. What’s more, Meta seems to be getting costs under control. It has gradually scaled back its projection of total costs for 2023 and now expects no more than a 2.7% increase—and that includes the cost of laying people off. Back in October, before Meta carried out any of its layoffs, its projections implied a 15% increase in 2023 expenses.