Why Facebook's Meta saw its first-ever fall in sales
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said a major reason was the current economic downturn that impacted digital ad sales, Meta’s core business.
After a decade of registering consistent growth and gravity-defying ad sales, all while fighting increasing regulatory scrutiny, Facebook parent Meta has posted its first-ever decline in quarterly revenue since it went public in 2012. The company’s profit also fell for the third straight quarter and its forecast for its advertisement business remained gloomy for the foreseeable future.
Meta’s total revenue, which primarily includes digital ad sales, fell 1% to $28.8 billion for the quarter that ended in June compared to the same time last year when it had posted a revenue of $29.1 billion. Similarly, the company’s profit was $6.69 billion, down 36% from a year earlier.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that the current economic downturn has had an impact on digital ad sales, Meta’s core business. “We seem to have entered an economic downturn that will have a broad impact on the digital advertising business,” Zuckerberg said in an earnings call. “The situation seems worse than it did a quarter ago.”
In her final earnings call, Meta’s outgoing COO Sheryl Sandberg said, “Foreign exchange trends had a significant impact in Q2, in particular the depreciation of the Euro relative to the dollar”.
The company will reduce its spending and slow its pace of hiring to weather the storm. “This is a period that demands more intensity, and I expect us to get more done with fewer resources,” Zuckerberg said.
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