Facebook’s parent company Meta has warned employees to expect a tough second half as the company continues to face challenges with its core online advertising business amid weakening economic momentum. ‘economy.
Meta chief product officer Chris Cox detailed the company’s financial dilemma in an internal memo that details key areas the social media giant plans to invest in, a spokesperson confirmed to CNBC. the note was previously reported by Reuters.
Cox reiterated statements made by Meta CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg during a call with analysts as part of the company’s first quarter. Benefits report, detailing the negative impact on the company’s business caused by a privacy update Apple made to the iPhone last year.
The Meta executive added that the company is going through “difficult times here and the headwinds are fierce”, stressing that its challenges are not expected to go away anytime soon.
“We need to operate smoothly in a slower growth environment, where teams shouldn’t expect massive influxes of new engineers and budgets,” Cox wrote. “We need to prioritize more ruthlessly, consider measuring and understanding what drives impact, invest in the efficiency and speed of developers across the business, and leverage leaner, more efficient and more exciting”.
To offset the impact of Apple’s update, which limited Facebook’s ability to target ads to specific audiences, Cox said the company is trying to make money with Instagram Reels, its competitor TikTok, and is also investing in AI to generate content recommendations like TikTok does. as the company has already said.
Meta also plans to invest in features that would make it easier for retailers to serve ads to customers of its family of apps and for employees to communicate with businesses via messaging.
A spokesperson for Meta downplayed the significance of the internal memo to CNBC, noting, “It was simply an internal strategy memo intended to build on what we’ve already said publicly in the results on the challenges we face and the opportunities we have, which we’re devoting more energy to tackling”.
Shares of Meta were relatively flat in after-hours trading Thursday at $161.10.
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