What Meta's Better-Than Expected Earnings Report Says About the Future

<div class="block">Meta just shared its latest earnings report and it was better than expected. Cheddar News senior reporter Michelle Castillo talked about what the report means for the Mark Zuckerberg-led company, particularly as ad-spending slows.</div>

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And that year of efficiency seems to be paying off after layoffs and some caution about the Mark Zuckerberg brand, things seem to be going well for me for more. Let's bring in senior reporter Michelle Castillo to help us understand what earnings mean for its future. You are the perfect person to talk to Michelle. What did we learn about meta business from its latest earnings report? So it was a stellar quarter for me. The company be both on the top and bottom line when it came to earnings and revenue and the cherry on top was its projections for the next quarter exceeded analysts expectations. So this means that meta is back and maybe not better than ever, but things are definitely looking up. So the main reason for meta's big win is the digital advertising and it has come back in the main way. Meta and its family of apps make money is through online ad sales. And this past quarter, it brought in $32 billion in revenue. Now, while there are fears that the ad market is slowing down because of questionary concerns, it seems that actually meta might be showing that the tide is turning because this is the first time in three straight quarters that meta has come in ahead of revenue estimates. So Zuckerberg had previously called this the year of efficiency as you pointed out. But it seems that the cutbacks are going to slow down in a call with analysts. He said quote, now that we've gone through the major layoffs, the rest of 2023 will be about creating stability for employees removing barriers that slow us down and introducing new A I power tools to speed us up and so on. So, meaning that the layoffs are over and they're back to the building stage. So let's speak of those, let's talk about those investments in A I. How is that helping meta moving forward, Michelle? Well, you have to remember it used to be all about the metaphor for me. It still is but it also is apparently equally about A I. Now, Zuckerberg said in an earnings call last night that meta was seeing a lot of advancements through the billions, it invested in A I. So A I recommendations have become the fastest growing category of content on its platforms, which is leading to an additional 7% more time spent on meta properties. It's also helping with its bottom line with almost all of its brand clients using at least one A I powered ad product, which is called meta advantage. Recently, it also launched A I enabled meta lattice which helps and adds performance using various data points. And it's also experimenting with generative A I through a program called Sandbox Zuckerberg emphasized that the quote two technological waves that were riding our A I in the near term and the metaverse over the longer term. And while threads adoption was a fun surprise for the small team that was working on it according to UC. And he did admit it's creating a big opportunity in the future A I and the meta are still topping their list of priorities. And we know Congress plans to cite Zuckerberg for contempt today, explain to our viewers why lawmakers are so angry at him. Well, Republicans feel Zuckerberg hasn't complied enough with Congress's request for information regarding its allegations into censorship. They believe that the meta CEO is central to conservative viewpoints being suppressed on meta platforms and quote, willfully refused to work with them. They added, they feel that quote, censorship by proxy is a serious threat to fundamental American civil liberties. Now, earlier this week, I spoke to me and in a statement, it worked, it said it worked in good faith for requests for information. It said that it sent over 53,000 pages of documents and they've made nearly a dozen current and former employees available and they said they're gonna continue to do so, but that's where they're leaving it.