Meta Q3 Earnings: Ad Business Strong as AI Costs Rise

Meta Publishes Its Q3 Earnings Report

Meta has released its Q3 earnings report, and the results point in two directions at once. The company’s advertising business remained strong, while spending tied to its artificial intelligence work continued to increase.

The filing materials separate user activity, advertising volume and pricing, total revenue, and the cost of Meta’s longer-term technology bets. Together, they show an ads business that is still expanding even as AI-related expenditure climbs.

Family Daily Active People Reach 3.64 Billion

On usage, Meta said its family daily active people count rose by 40 million to 3.64 billion in the third quarter. That figure is the cumulative number of active users across Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, WhatsApp, and Threads.

The company is still adding users, which the earnings coverage described as evidence of its growth strategy. Meta is also still growing its audience in several key markets.

India is now Meta’s biggest single user market. Advancing connectivity in the region is providing new opportunities. Meta has also continued to build its presence in Asia Pacific, where ad impressions have grown by 24% this year, according to Merca 2.0.

Ad Impressions Rise While Prices Increase

Across Meta’s apps, overall ad impressions rose by 10% in Q3, according to Meta’s earnings exhibit. That increase was a slight decline compared with the company’s more recent quarterly performance.

The coverage called that pattern somewhat unexpected because Meta has added more ad placements and Threads has been gaining traction.

Threads Passes X in Monthly Users

Meta also reported that Threads has overtaken X in overall monthly active users. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg had made that claim in an interview last month, and Meta Newsroom also posted the comparison on X.

The coverage said that larger Threads audience should create more advertising opportunities. It also raised the possibility that Threads ads may already have reached a saturation point, which could be why the impression figures are normalizing. That explanation was presented as a possibility, not as a stated cause.

Meta offset at least some of the slowdown in ad-impression growth by raising ad prices, which were up 14%.

The same coverage said the price increase is probably not the best news for marketers. It suggested that Meta’s response would be that its ads are becoming more valuable through enhanced targeting powered by its evolving AI models. That was framed as Meta’s likely counterargument, not as a separate quantified result.

Third-Quarter Revenue Rises 26%

The combined result was a sharp increase in the top line. Meta’s third-quarter revenue rose 26% year over year to $64.6 billion.

Those figures show the advertising business continuing to support the company’s results even alongside a large increase in expenses connected to its AI push.

Expenses Jump With Meta’s AI Investment

Meta reported a 68% year-over-year increase in expenses in Q3. The company said that increase was driven primarily by capital expenditures.

Another chart in the earnings coverage was described as starting to look concerning.

Meta had already told the market that expenses would keep rising in line with its AI investment. The company has pledged more than $600 million to AI infrastructure projects. The charts were described as reflecting that commitment and showing a steep increase in AI spending. The coverage said the pace of that spending further underlines why Meta needs its AI tools to generate more revenue, because those next-level bets are not currently making a lot of money.

Reality Labs Revenue Edges Higher

A separate listing showed that Reality Labs, the division covering Meta’s AI glasses and VR headsets, brought in only slightly more revenue in Q3 than in the previous quarter.

The quarter therefore leaves a clear split in the reported numbers: advertising is still producing strong revenue growth, while the cost of Meta’s AI program is rising much faster. like.tg continues monitoring social media platform updates as major companies publish earnings and spending plans.