META · Forward model · Advertising · Bear case
What has to happen in Advertising
Model as of
This page changes Advertising inside the complete META model. Every other vertical, corporate programme and valuation assumption stays in the selected portfolio case.
Shares this vertical and portfolio case. Slider and horizon edits stay in your browser.
Advertising
Basis quarter$59.36B
Final quarter$75.09B
Implied CAGR+5%
Final revenue mix93%
Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger and Threads sold to advertisers. 97.6% of company revenue and effectively all of the profit. The people are already there - 3.60 billion daily - so this line is a monetisation story, not a user-growth story: impressions up 14% and price per ad up 12% is what a 27% quarter is made of.
Last four quarters
2025 Q3
$50.08B
Reported
2025 Q4
$58.14B
Reported
2026 Q1
$55.02B
Reported
2026 Q2
$59.36B
Reported
Feed and Stories adsReels and video adsAdvantage+ / AI-ranked campaignsClick-to-message and business messaging ads
Subscribers
3.60B
64.3% of a 5.60B addressable base
3.60B family daily active people, June 2026 average, as disclosed. Up 3% year over year.
Addressable subscribers
5.60B
the S-curve ceiling
5.6B people online and over 13. The audience ceiling is the connected population, not the app store.
Net adds
0/qtr
ramping toward 0/qtr, throttled as the base approaches the TAM
Net-add ceiling
0/qtr
what supply can deliver at full rate
ARPU
$5.50/mo
drifting +2.5% per quarter, floor $0.00
$5.50 a month, $59.36B of ad revenue over 3.60B people. Derived, not disclosed.
Non-subscriber revenue
$0/qtr
growing 0.0% per quarter
Zero: Other revenue is its own vertical, so this line is advertising alone.
Advertising
Latest: $75.09B (2031Q2E)
| Period | Value |
|---|---|
| 2025Q1 | $41.39B |
| 2025Q2 | $46.56B |
| 2025Q3 | $50.08B |
| 2025Q4 | $58.14B |
| 2026Q1 | $55.02B |
| 2026Q2 | $59.36B |
| 2026Q3E | $60.19B |
| 2026Q4E | $60.98B |
| 2027Q1E | $61.77B |
| 2027Q2E | $62.56B |
| 2027Q3E | $63.35B |
| 2027Q4E | $64.13B |
| 2028Q1E | $64.91B |
| 2028Q2E | $65.70B |
| 2028Q3E | $66.48B |
| 2028Q4E | $67.26B |
| 2029Q1E | $68.04B |
| 2029Q2E | $68.82B |
| 2029Q3E | $69.60B |
| 2029Q4E | $70.38B |
| 2030Q1E | $71.17B |
| 2030Q2E | $71.95B |
| 2030Q3E | $72.73B |
| 2030Q4E | $73.52B |
| 2031Q1E | $74.31B |
| 2031Q2E | $75.09B |
Assumptions & reasoning
- Modelled as daily active people x revenue per person rather than as a growth rate, because the two halves move at completely different speeds: the audience grew 3% year over year and revenue grew 27%. A single growth number would hide that every dollar of upside here is price, not people.
- Revenue per person is derived from two disclosed numbers - $59,363M of advertising revenue over 3.60 billion daily active people - and is $5.50 a month. It is not a metric Meta publishes, and it moves with ad load, auction density and mix, not with a price list.
- The 2.5% quarterly drift on revenue per person is a deliberate deceleration: it compounds to about 10% a year against the 23% this line just ran. Holding today's monetisation growth for five years is the single easiest way to make this model say anything you like, so it is not held.
- The first projected quarter lands at about $61B, inside the company's own $61-64B guidance for Q3 2026, which is the only near-term check available on this line.
- Capex intensity starts at 70% of this segment's revenue and glides to 22%. That is not a guess: $50.9B was already spent in the first half against $130-145B of full-year guidance, which leaves about 68% of revenue a quarter for the back half. Almost all of it is AI infrastructure serving ranking, recommendation and generative ads, so it is charged here rather than spread evenly.
- The driver grows smoothly and Meta does not: advertising is seasonally strongest in Q4 and weakest in Q1, so individual projected quarters are wrong in a way that cancels over a year. Read the annual totals, not the Q4 line.
- The EBITDA margin of 50% is struck on a quarter carrying a $2.40B legal charge and $1.18B of severance; underlying is nearer 54%. It glides to 56% as those roll off and the infrastructure scales, which is the assumption most worth arguing with given depreciation is compounding behind it.