Revenue from click-to-message ads in India has doubled: Mark Zuckerberg

Meta on Thursday said its revenue from click-to-message ads in India doubled year on year in the third quarter ended September as the company continues to push WhatsApp business messaging in the country, which is its largest market.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg reiterated that business messaging will be the next major pillar of the social media giant’s business.

“More than 60% of people on WhatsApp in India message a business app account,” he said. “Now, I think that this is going to be a really big opportunity for new business AIs that we hope will enable any business to easily set up an AI that people can message to help with commerce and support,” he added.

In February 2023, Zuckerberg had said click-to-message ads had reached a $10-billion revenue run-rate globally.

India is the biggest market for WhatsApp with over 500 million users.

Speaking of the business sense that it made, Zuckerberg said most commerce and messaging is in countries where the cost of labour is low enough that it makes sense for businesses to have people corresponding with customers over text. And in those countries like Thailand or Vietnam, there is a huge amount of commerce that happens in this way, he said.

“But in lots of parts of the world, the cost of labour is too expensive for this to be viable,” he added. “But with business AIs, we have the opportunity to bring down that cost, and expand commerce and messaging into larger economies across the world. So, making business AIs work for more businesses is going to be an important focus for us into 2024.”

Last month, Zuckerberg had unveiled many business messaging-focused product features on WhatsApp including in-chat payments, and enabled businesses to create customised experiences for customers through WhatsApp Flows, at its global Conversations event held in Mumbai.

“India is leading the world in terms of how people and businesses embrace messaging” he had said at the time.

Meta Q3 Net soars 164%

Facebook parent Meta on Thursday reported that its net profit rose 164% on year to touch $11.58 billion for the quarter ended September 30 as compared to $4.4 billion a year earlier.

The Menlo Park-headquartered company saw revenue surge 23%, which happens to be the fastest rate of growth that the company has seen since 2021.

“We had a good quarter for our community and business,” Zuckerberg said in a statement. “I’m proud of the work our teams have done to advance AI and mixed reality with the launch of Quest 3, Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses and our AI studio.”

Revenue for the third quarter touched $34.15 billion, buoyed by healthy numbers in user metrics as well as a bounce back in advertising.

Meta, with its family of apps that include WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook, is ahead of the competition when it comes to the ads business, which was what fuelled its growth in Q3.

Google parent Alphabet had said in its earnings just a day earlier that ad revenue increased about 9.5%, while Snap reported revenue growth of 5%.

“In the third quarter of 2023, ad impressions delivered across our family of apps increased by 31% year-over-year and the average price per ad decreased by 6% year-over-year,” Meta’s statement read.

For the fourth quarter, Meta said it expects revenue of $36.5 billion to $40 billion. In its guidance, the company also said it expects higher infrastructure-related costs next year.