Meta prioritizes building engaging user experiences across its Family of Apps, with monetization following successful scaling. This commitment is evident in its ongoing investments in AI, which are transforming user interactions on Meta’s platforms and creating new avenues for growth.
| Q4 2023 (US$ million) | Q4 2024 (US$ million) | Percentage change | |
| Revenue | 40,111 | 48,385 | +20.6% |
| Family of Apps | 39,040 | 47,302 | +21.2% |
| Reality Labs | 1,071 | 1,083 | +1.1% |
| Operating income | 16,384 | 23,365 | +42.6% |
| Net income | 14,017 | 20,838 | +48.7% |
Revenue grew 20.6% year-on-year to US$48.4 billion, driven by a 21% increase in ad revenue from the Family of Apps, primarily fueled by online commerce.
Beyond advertising, the Family of Apps segment also generated revenue from business messaging. The WhatsApp Business Platform was the primary growth driver, achieving a 55% year-on-year revenue increase to US$519 million.
Revenue from the Reality Labs segment grew 1.1% year-on-year to US$1.1 billion, driven by sales of Ray-Ban Meta AI glasses. However, the segment’s operating loss widened from US$4.6 billion in Q4 2023 to US$5.0 billion in Q4 2024. Continued investments in wearables (including AI glasses) and the Metaverse are expected to further extend Reality Labs’ losses in 2025.
Meta’s total expenses in Q4 2024 rose 5% year-on-year to US$25.0 billion, though the increase was moderated by reductions in legal accruals and restructuring costs. The company has also improved internal efficiency, leveraging its AI-powered coding assistant and Llama to enhance coding productivity.
Capital expenditures totalled US$14.8 billion in Q4 2024 as Meta invested in servers, data centres, and network infrastructure to support the development and operation of its Family of Apps. The company plans to enhance workload efficiency by extending the useful lives of both AI and non-AI servers to approximately five and a half years. This extension is expected to generate savings in annual capital expenditures and reduce depreciation expenses.
Meta continues to invest in both third-party and custom silicon to optimize its infrastructure. The Meta Training and Inference Accelerator (MTIA), the company’s custom-designed silicon chip, is currently deployed for ranking and recommendation inference workloads—including ads and organic content—to reduce compute costs. Meta plans to expand MTIA’s usage and extend it to training workloads next year.
Revenue in the upcoming quarter is expected to grow between 8% and 15% year-on-year, reaching between US$39.5 billion and US$41.8 billion, despite a 3% foreign currency headwind. Capital expenditures for 2025 are projected to range from US$60 billion to US$65 billion, primarily driven by infrastructure investments—mainly servers—as well as spending on Reality Labs. Additionally, more data centers are expected to become operational in the first half of 2025.
CEO Mark Zuckerberg shared his vision for Meta AI with analysts, expressing confidence in the company’s ability to lead as AI assistants become mainstream. Meta AI is poised to benefit from the company’s vast user base and its integration across the Family of Apps. Currently, it boasts more than 700 million monthly active users.
Zuckerberg has long been a proponent of open-source AI models, particularly Llama, believing that industry-wide adoption fosters innovation, reduces costs, and enhances performance through shared development and supply chain standardization. Meta’s Llama 4 AI model is progressing well, with planned enhancements set to further strengthen its capabilities.
Advantage+ is Meta’s AI-powered advertising suite that automates campaign optimization—including targeting, placements, budget allocation, and creatives—to boost performance and efficiency. Its adoption is accelerating, with Advantage+ shopping campaigns surpassing a US$20 billion annual run rate, marking a 70% year-over-year increase. Meta is further simplifying campaign creation, positioning Advantage+ as the default for sales, app, and lead generation campaigns. The number of advertisers using its generative ad creative tools has surged to over 4 million, up from 1 million just six months ago, with many reporting significant improvements in return on ad spend after adopting Advantage+ shopping campaigns.
Family of Apps
In December 2024, more than 3.3 billion people engaged with at least one of Meta’s Family of Apps daily, reflecting year-over-year growth across Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp globally.
Geographically, the strongest ad revenue growth was recorded in the Rest of World region (27%), followed by APAC (23%), Europe (22%), and North America (18%).
Meta remains focused on strategically increasing ad supply and placements while enhancing ad performance to drive revenue growth. In Q4, ad impressions rose 6%, primarily driven by APAC, while the average ad price increased 14% due to higher demand and improved ad performance. However, despite rising ad prices, increased engagement in lower-monetization regions and surfaces—such as Stories and Reels—tempered overall revenue gains. Meta’s AI-driven ad enhancements, including a new system developed with Nvidia, led to an 8% improvement in ad quality.
Facebook and Instagram
Despite being one of the more mature social media platforms, Facebook continues to thrive with over 3 billion monthly active users. In Q4 2024, user engagement on Facebook and Instagram saw strong growth, with time spent on videos—including Reels—rising by double digits year-over-year.
Meta is also enhancing tools for creators to expand their audiences. A key initiative is the launch of ‘Edits,’ a new app designed to streamline Reels production and editing for mobile creators.
WhatsApp and Messenger
WhatsApp remains the world’s leading messaging platform and is expanding its presence in the U.S., where it now has over 100 million monthly active users. Despite strong competition from Messenger, Instagram Direct, iMessage, and Google Messages, WhatsApp continues to gain market share.
Meta is currently piloting Business AI for click-to-message ads on WhatsApp and Messenger, targeting English-speaking businesses in APAC and Spanish-speaking businesses in Latin America—regions with strong business messaging adoption. Early feedback highlights time savings and faster response times. Meta is accelerating AI-driven business messaging development, with a focus on improving ad conversions and exploring future commerce applications. CFO Susan Li emphasized AI’s role in reducing business costs and scaling conversations, particularly in developed markets and regions where business messaging is still emerging.
Threads
With over a million daily sign-ups, Threads has surpassed 320 million monthly active users. The platform is making steady progress toward becoming a leading discussion hub, with ambitions to reach 1 billion users in the coming years.
CFO Susan Li sees opportunities to monetize Threads’ growing impressions, with ads set to be gradually introduced and tested. Meanwhile, the app is enhancing content discovery by prioritizing recent posts, top creators, and followed accounts in its recommendation system. Custom feeds are also being refined for greater personalization.
Reality Labs
Meta sold over 1 million pairs of Ray-Ban Meta AI glasses in 2024. CEO Mark Zuckerberg sees smart glasses as the ideal AI device form factor and a key step toward the next major computing platform, particularly with the future potential of holographic AR.
CFO Susan Li highlighted the complementary nature of smart glasses within Meta’s ecosystem, particularly their synergy with the Family of Apps. Management remains focused on delivering scalable consumer products, such as Quest and Horizon, which are experiencing growing user engagement.
Key analyst questions
Zuckerberg envisions AI agents capable of handling complex tasks. For now, Meta is focused on integrating AI into its core products, such as advertising and content recommendations.
The company is investing across multiple AI areas, including generative AI training, core AI for ad ranking and recommendations, and broader non-AI functions. While core AI improvements are being deployed globally, generative AI testing is primarily concentrated in markets like Southeast Asia and Latin America, where business messaging is well established.
CFO Susan Li highlighted several monetization opportunities stemming from Meta’s AI investments. These include enhancing content creation tools, improving ad customization and effectiveness, expanding business messaging, and further developing Meta AI.
Li noted that Meta AI is most widely used on WhatsApp, where users primarily seek information, education, and emotional support in one-on-one chats. On Facebook, strong engagement comes from feed integration, allowing users to ask questions about recommended content. More broadly, Meta AI is being leveraged for information gathering, communication, writing, research, and recommendations. In 2025, Meta AI development will focus on personalization, including improved memory of user interactions and more refined content recommendations.
When asked about Meta’s AI monetization strategy, Li emphasized that the company’s primary focus is on building a strong user experience. While future revenue opportunities—such as paid recommendations and premium offerings—are being considered, they are not the current development priority. Meanwhile, advertiser demand for AI-powered tools remains strong, reinforcing AI’s role in enhancing Meta’s ad ecosystem.
Li emphasized Meta’s long-term strategy for driving ad revenue growth through both pricing and impression increases. While pricing is shaped by factors such as auction dynamics and ad surface mix, Meta expects ongoing improvements in ad performance to support higher pricing. Strong cost-per-action trends and enhanced advertiser conversions are anticipated to drive CPM growth and increase the value of impressions.
The fifth perspective
Meta’s 2025 outlook, as outlined by CEO Mark Zuckerberg, prioritizes long-term growth initiatives, including AI-driven enhancements in advertising, recommendations, and feed content, alongside continued video expansion. While the success of these efforts remains to be seen, Meta is actively laying the foundation for future advancements, particularly in the rapidly evolving AI landscape.
