Meta posts $51.24 bn revenue in Q3 with ad price up 10% and impressions up 14%

New Delhi: Meta reported a strong third quarter on the back of advertising demand and better AI-driven ad delivery, with ad revenue up 26% year-on-year to $50.08 billion, lifting total revenue to $51.24 billion. 

Management said higher ad impressions and improved pricing powered the quarter, with impressions rising 14% and average price per ad up 10%.

Mark Zuckerberg told investors that 3.5 billion people now use at least one Meta app daily and that Instagram has crossed 3 billion monthly actives. 

He said AI-powered recommendations are lifting engagement, with time spent up 5% on Facebook and 10% on Threads, while video time spent on Instagram is more than 30% higher than last year. Reels continues to be a focus for time spent and monetisation across Facebook and Instagram.

The gains were anchored in the Family of Apps: Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger, which delivered $50.77 billion in revenue and $24.97 billion in operating income. 

Meta framed AI as the engine behind both engagement and monetisation. Zuckerberg said the company is unifying multiple ranking models into simpler, more general systems to improve ad performance and efficiency, and laid out a path to combine Facebook, Instagram and ads recommendations into a single system to make “trillions of recommendations” each day.

Meta also highlighted product milestones tied to ads performance: AI recommendation gains that surface more relevant content and create more inventory, and new automation in the ads stack that simplifies campaign creation for marketers. Externally, the company’s end-to-end AI advertising tools and Advantage+ features are seeing wider adoption, helping marketers optimise budgets and creatives with fewer manual steps.

Reality Labs remained a drag, posting $470 million in revenue and a $4.43 billion operating loss for the quarter, as Meta continues to invest in AR/VR hardware and AI glasses. 

Zuckerberg said more than a billion monthly active users already use Meta AI, and reiterated plans to “aggressively” build compute capacity to support frontier models and the company’s goal of “personal superintelligence for everyone”.

Guidance points to continued ad momentum into the holiday period. Meta forecast fourth-quarter revenue of $56–59 billion, reiterated full-year 2025 expense guidance of $116–118 billion, and raised capital expenditure guidance to $70–72 billion to fund AI and infrastructure. Management flagged that expenses and capex could accelerate in 2026 as compute investments ramp.

Bottom-line comparability was affected by a large non-cash tax charge tied to changes in US tax law, but operating trends in the ads business remain robust. Meta said it is seeing stable growth in engagement and creator output across formats, with AI-assisted creation tools feeding its recommendation systems so content can be matched more precisely to user intent and advertiser goals.

Key metrics (Q3 FY25):

• Ad revenue: $50.08 billion (+26% YoY)
  
  
• Total revenue: $51.24 billion (+26% YoY)
  
  
• Ad impressions: +14% YoY; average price per ad: +10% YoY
  
  
• Family of Apps revenue/operating income: $50.77b / $24.97b
  
  
• Reality Labs revenue/operating loss: $470m / $(4.43)b
  
  
• Q4 revenue outlook: $56–59b; FY25 expenses: $116–118b; FY25 capex: $70–72b