Meta Expands Ad Volume and Pricing as Selloff Erases Billions Across Big Tech

Meta Platforms reported third-quarter revenue of $64.60 billion, up 26% from a year earlier, driven by concurrent increases in ad volume and pricing even as a sharp equity market selloff erased hundreds of billions of dollars across major technology valuations.

According to reporting aggregated by Yahoo Finance (https://finance.yahoo.com/markets/stocks/articles/big-tech-sheds-billions-meta-193038566.html?.tsrc=rss), the broader technology sector saw historic valuation swings over the same stretch. Alphabet shed $477 billion in market value during the week at its Friday low, marking its steepest weekly drop on record and the second-largest weekly market loss for any U.S.-listed firm. Most of Alphabet's contraction occurred in a single Thursday session following its third-quarter financial report, which erased $475 billion. Across October as a whole, Alphabet lost approximately $766 billion at Friday's low, trailing only an estimated $822 billion monthly valuation drop logged by SpaceX in July.

Drawdowns extended across semiconductor and enterprise software providers. Intel fell as much as 30% on Friday following a muted outlook, contributing to a weekly loss in market capitalization exceeding $100 billion. Nvidia and SpaceX also lost more than $100 billion in market value over the week, while Amazon shed about $70 billion following its quarterly results. Enterprise software providers ServiceNow and Fortinet dropped between 25% and 33%. The pullback compressed Alphabet's price-to-earnings ratio to its lowest level in more than a decade.

Not all capital withdrew from public markets. Eli Lilly, Tesla, and memory chipmaker SK Hynix added roughly $370 billion in combined market value over the same period. In a commentary cited by Yahoo Finance, UBS Chief Investment Office Americas and global head of equities Ulrike Hoffmann-Burchardi advised against exiting equity positions during drawdowns, writing that UBS continues to anticipate broad equity upside and recommending that investors maintain portfolio resilience with exposure beyond the technology sector.

Against that backdrop, Meta's core advertising engine showed continuing demand across Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and WhatsApp. Advertising generated $63.061 billion of the company's $64.60 billion in quarterly revenue. The volume of ad impressions delivered rose 10% year over year, while the average price per ad increased 14%, showing that top-line growth combined higher inventory delivery with increased advertiser pricing.

Meta reported that its family of apps reached an average of 3.64 billion daily active people in September, up 3% from the prior year. Over the trailing 12 months, the company posted an 81.03% gross margin and a 32.86% operating margin, with earnings per share growing at an annualized rate of 18.41% over the past five years.

The coming quarters will test whether Meta can sustain its double-digit ad pricing gains and scale business messaging on WhatsApp as large cloud and technology operators face mounting scrutiny over capital spending and hardware infrastructure commitments.