Amazon, Snap, and Google up double digits after earnings. Meta down double digits.
It was a wild week in big tech, with advertising at the center of the story.
Amazon finally disclosed its advertising revenue. As Benedict Evans noted, at $31B in 2021, it is roughly the size as the entire global newspaper industry. The growth of that segment has been extraordinary.
Google and Snap had huge quarters on the advertising front, as well. Snap had its first profitable quarter ever. It seemed like exclamations on all fronts for advertising businesses.
And then there was Meta.
What happened to Meta? It lost share in the advertising market to those three players as a result of declining relative engagement on its properties, and, crucially Apple’s IDFA privacy change.
It’s worth double clicking on Apple’s role in all of this. It had an outsized impact on web and mobile advertisers who rely on conversion and lookalike data. Google and Amazon rely more on clicks. Snap relies more on brand advertisers.
It was performance marketers who make their living on Facebook conversions who got hurt the most by Apple’s change. And that translated into decreased share for Meta.
It will be fascinating to see if this story continues to play out in the coming quarters, or if the damage is done.
