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The numbers
$164.5 billion — Meta’s 2024 revenue, up 22% compared to 2023. Q4 revenue was $48.39 billion, up 21% year-over-year.
3.35 billion — Daily active people on Meta’s family of applications in December 2024, a 5% rise from the same month in 2023.
Ad impressions delivered across Meta’s family of apps rose 6% year-over-year in the fourth quarter and 11% year-over-year for full-year 2024.
Meta’s average price per ad increased 14% year-over-year in the fourth quarter and 10% year-over-year for the full 12 months.
The watercooler talk
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg discussed the “hundreds of billions” the company planned to invest in artificial intelligence infrastructure in his opening remarks during the company’s earnings call, adding that Meta has a plan to speed up its AI initiatives over the next few years.
He alluded to new competition from China’s DeepSeek, and that Meta still hasn’t figured out its impact yet.
“There are a number of novel things that (DeepSeek) did that I think we’re still digesting,” Zuckerberg said. “There are a number of advancements that they’ve made that we hope to implement in our systems.”
Following Zuckerberg’s cost-cutting “year of efficiency” in 2023, which involved heavy layoffs, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp has been busy hiring throughout 2024.
Meta now has 74,067 employees, up 10% compared with the same quarter last year. The company announced earlier this month that it would slash 5% of its workforce in a round of performance-based layoffs, but the news came after the end of the period.
Finally, Meta’s recent decision to eliminate third-party fact-checking has drawn criticism, but chief financial officer Susan Li said there has been “no noticeable impact on advertiser spend.”