Facebook reports profit up but warns about future ad sales
Facebook reported a profit of USD 9 billion for the third quarter, up from USD 7.8 billion in the same quarter last year. The company will start reporting its augmented and virtual reality labs separately as part of the company investing in CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s vision – the metaverse, understood as a network of platforms.
The company warned that Apple’s new privacy setting can have a negative effect on the company’s advertising business in the Q4. Facebook argued strongly against Apple’s privacy function before it was launched. The privacy setting means that Apple phone users have to activate an ID for advertisers’ programmatic adverts. If they don’t it limits the efficiency of targeted advertising.
“As Apple’s changes make e-commerce and customer acquisition less effective on the web, solutions that allow businesses to set up shop right inside our apps will become increasingly attractive and important to them”, Zuckerberg said.
“We’ve built solutions like ads that can dynamically point to either a business’s website or their Shop on our platforms depending on what will perform better for them, and that will help more businesses navigate this challenging environment.”
The report came after a couple of weeks of bad publicity for the company with whistleblowers accusing Facebook of not acting against misinformation and of putting profit before security.
Zuckerberg commented on the whistleblowers criticism and leaked company documents at the presentation of the report:
“I believe large organizations should be scrutinized and I’d much rather live in a society where they are than one where they can’t be. Good faith criticism helps us get better. But my view is that what we’re seeing is a coordinated effort to selectively use leaked documents to paint a false picture of our company.”
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