Meta achieved a 27% year-over-year increase in advertising revenue in the second quarter of 2026, reaching $59.4 billion, and emphasized that its continued investment in artificial intelligence is continuously optimizing advertising campaign performance. According to the company's releasedearnings statement, total revenue increased 28% year-over-year to $60.8 billion in the three months ending June 30. Although revenue exceeded market expectations, earnings fell short of Wall Street targets, and the stock price declined after the earnings release.

The parent company of Facebook and Instagram still faces external questions about the rationality of its massive AI spending. The company's third-quarter revenue guidance of $61 billion to $64 billion failed to satisfy investors. Chief Financial Officer Susan Li stated that the company is digesting the high base effect from the strong growth in ad impressions in the third quarter of last year, while policy changes in Europe allow platforms to offerless personalized ads, which may bring additional performance pressure.

Management attempted to alleviate investor concerns by emphasizing Meta's dominant position in digital advertising and AI's enhancement of monetization efficiency.

"In dollar terms, our advertising business grew faster year-over-year than any other company that has disclosed advertising revenue—these AI investments are generating returns," Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg told analysts on theearnings call.

Meta's AI-driven advertising product suite, Advantage+, continues to expand, with second-quarter annualized revenue run rate reaching $75 billion. During the quarter, the company also launched the Meta Generative Recommender, which Li described as a "paradigm shift" in how ads are delivered on the platform.

"We no longer score every possible ad individually, but instead use large language models to reason by combining ad content with user preferences, predicting the most suitable ad for each user," Li explained. "This makes our ad matching smarter and more precise, thereby delivering compounding performance improvements for advertisers."

Some research institutions expect that this social media giantmay surpass Google in advertising revenue for the first time this year. However, Google has a broader range of business drivers, including itscloud computing business。

, which is thriving amid the AI boom. Meta also attempted to diversify revenue sources beyond advertising in the second quarter. Due to increased demand for WhatsApp paid messaging and subscription services, "other" revenue in the Family of Apps grew 73% year-over-year, surpassing $1 billion for the first time. However, for a company of Meta's scale, $1 billion may be just a drop in the bucket. Investors are now more focused on its capital expenditure scale.

In terms of capital expenditure, Meta narrowed its full-year spending guidance range to $130 billion to $145 billion, compared with a previous estimate of $125 billion to $145 billion. This means the lower end of the spending range has been raised compared with previous expectations.

"Meta believes AI infrastructure has become a strategic asset, but its bills are arriving faster than returns are materializing. Meta's advertising business remains strong, but everything else has become more expensive," said Mike Proulx, Vice President and Research Director at Forrester, in an email comment. "Revenue beat expectations, user engagement continued to grow, but nearly all cash generated this quarter was consumed by AI infrastructure spending. Investors must now judge whether Meta's growing list of AI projects represents diversification or strategic distraction."