Meta’s AI bets supercharge marketing efficiency — and costs

Meta grew revenue 26% yr over yr to $51.24 billion in Q3, based on an earnings statement, beating analyst estimates on a key metric tied to its promoting business. Impressive momentum in promoting was attributed to the platform’s advancements in artificial intelligence (AI), that are keeping consumers engaged with apps like Facebook and Instagram for longer and improving Meta’s ad-ranking systems and performance.

“After just a few years of existential hand-wringing, the corporate has found its rhythm again by doing what it does best: scaling attention and monetizing it with ruthless efficiency,” said Jeremy Goldman, eMarketer’s senior director of briefings, in emailed comments. “While everyone else continues to be pitching AI moonshots, Meta has quietly turned AI into margin. Its ad tools are sharper, its targeting smarter, and its short-form video business is finally paying off.”  

The annual revenue run rate for Meta’s end-to-end AI-powered ad solutions, including the Advantage+ suite, has surpassed $60 billion, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said on a call discussing the outcomes with investors, underpinning more significant uptake from brands. The variety of advertisers using at the least one among Meta’s video-generation tools jumped 20% over Q2 2025, though specific figures weren’t broken out. 

In the Q&A portion of the decision, Zuckerberg reiterated a vision of a world where AI does many of the heavy lifting for brands. In the manager’s considering, marketers will simply have to input campaign objectives and financial details and have Meta’s automation take over from there, handling every little thing from asset creation to personalization and targeting. Other major digital platforms, including Amazon, are working to construct out similar AI-supported promoting infrastructure.

Elsewhere, the typical price-per-ad across Meta’s portfolio grew 10% YoY in Q3, reflecting increased demand. Those gains were barely offset by impression growth stemming from ad formats and regions which can be less well-monetized. CFO Susan Li called out particularly high engagement for Meta’s video features over the period. Instagram Reels, a TikTok competitor, has develop into more centralized on the app, with an annual revenue run rate of over $50 billion, based on Zuckerberg. 

A deal with Reels responds to changing user tastes, with people more steadily tuning into creator content beneficial from outside of their direct network of friends and family, and also as TikTok has faced repeated ownership challenges within the U.S. Federal officials have signaled that a deal for a U.S. buyer to amass TikTok may very well be finalized Thursday.   

The costs to remain competitive within the AI arms race, which requires high levels of specialization and energy intensive data centers, remain steep. Meta raised its expected capital expenditures for the complete yr to between $70 billion and $72 billion (its lower range previously was $66 billion). Executives boasted of a deep talent bench in AI, but it surely’s an area where the corporate has needed to make some painful adjustments of late. Meta laid off about 600 employees from its AI division earlier this month. 

Meta’s shares tumbled on the expected hike in spending on AI. Meta’s Reality Labs unit in control of development of virtual reality products and the metaverse also continues to be a sore spot, recording a lack of $4.4 billion in Q3. Still, those headwinds could also be hitches within the road if AI is capable of further enhance promoting performance.   

“In 2025, Meta’s biggest flex is execution. It’s managed to outgrow rivals not by chasing hype, but by industrializing what others are still experimenting with — AI-powered relevance at scale,” said eMarketer’s Goldman. “The irony? For all of the talk of the metaverse, Meta’s true transformation has been into essentially the most efficient ad company on Earth.”