Meta earnings reports for Q4 2021 are in, focus on monetizing Reels and building metaverse in 2022

Meta (formerly Facebook) has posted its fiscal Q4 results and the overall buzz resulted in a decrease of more than 20% in share price in after-hours trading. Earnings per share for Q4 fell short of forecasts ($3.67 versus $3.84 according to Refinitic via CNBC) though revenue was $33.67 billion, just over the forecasted $33.4 billion via CNBC.

Meta’s daily and monthly active users also fell short of expectations, with 1.93 billion DAUs (daily active users) compared to 1.95 billion (according to Street Account via CNBC), and 2.91 billion MAUs (monthly active users) compared to the expected 2.95 billion (via CNBC.

Meta’s Family of Apps includes Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger, all of which raked in $32.79 billion with an operating income of $15.89 billion. Meanwhile, it’s Reality Labs division (including R&D for AR/VR applications and hardware sales of Oculus products and solutions) made $877 million in revenue but has an operating loss of $3.3 billion.

Zuckerberg made a Facebook post following up Meta’s earnings call to talk about some of the shortcomings and areas of improvement for the company moving forward. The most apparent move is Meta’s focus on Reels, which continues to have high engagement on Facebook and Instagram.

People have a lot of choices for how they want to spend their time and apps like TikTok are growing very quickly. And this is why our focus on Reels is so important over the long-term. As is our work to make sure our apps are the best services out there for young adults, which I spoke about on our last call.

Zuckerberg draws parallels with Facebook Watch and Stories, both of which took longer to monetize as the platforms were transitioning to integrating them into Facebook’s main feed.

We've made these types of transitions before with mobile feed and Stories, where we took on headwinds in the near-term to align with important trends over the long term. And while video has historically been slower to monetize, we believe that over time short-form video is going to monetize more like feed or Stories than like Watch – so I'm optimistic that we'll get to where we need to be with Reels too.

Zuckerberg touches on the investments that Meta expects to make in 2022.

First is Reels. It's clear short-form video will be an increasing part of how people consume content moving forward, and Reels is now our fastest growing content format by far. It's already the biggest contributor to engagement growth on Instagram and it's growing very quickly on FB too.

Meta sees community and organization apps like Discord or Slack and promises to add features to Facebook groups, including Community Chats for more granular communication amongst Facebook groups.

So we're going to help people on WhatsApp better organize their group chats and make it easier to find information for the communities they're part of – like parent groups or neighborhoods. And we're also building Community Chats on Facebook and Messenger for real-time conversations within those groups and communities.

Meta’s recognized that both Apple’s iOS privacy changes and stronger user data regulations in Europe have impacted ad revenue and conversions through its Shop platform on Instagram. It will focus on restructuring its ad infrastructure to work through the restrictions to delivery personalized ads.

Next up is ads. With Apple's iOS changes and new regulation in Europe, there's a clear trend where less data is available to deliver personalized ads. But people still want to see relevant ads, and businesses still want to reach the right customers. So we're rebuilding a lot of our ads infrastructure so we can continue to grow and deliver high-quality personalized ads.

Check out the full Facebook post on the Source link “2” below.

Sources 1 • 2 • Via