Snap and Amazon Q1 Shows Big Tech’s Advertising Advantage

Advantage, big tech. Snap’s first-quarter report today, showing a 7% drop in revenue, was a markedly worse performance than what its much bigger rival Meta Platforms reported on Wednesday night. (For those who’ve already forgotten, Meta’s ad revenue rose 4% in the quarter.) More noticeable was the difference in the second-quarter revenue outlook: Snap projected a 6% drop, while Meta projected growth of as much as 11%. Investors have made their choice, selling Snap stock down close to 20% in after-hours trading and wiping out all its gains for the year. Meta, on the other hand, is up 98% so far this year.

And this isn’t just about Meta versus Snap. Alphabet’s Google is sailing through the ad downturn reasonably well, all things considered. While it reported a fractional dip in first-quarter ad revenue earlier this week, its search ad number rose slightly. What suffered were ad sales it handles for other companies’ websites, as well as on YouTube. And on the video front, YouTube’s 2.6% decline was better than the 6.1% drop reported by Comcast’s NBCUniversal today for its domestic ad revenue. Meanwhile Amazon tonight reported a 21% increase in advertising, slightly better than last quarter’s growth rate and a lot better than for other big ad-selling firms. (Details on Amazon’s overall quarter are here, Snap is here and Comcast here.)