And They Said Facebook Was Dead

In Today’s Issue:

📈 Meta reports a 23% revenue in Q3, driven by a rebound in digital ads

📱 Threads app introduces polls and GIFs; grows to 100M users

🛒 Amazon tests tool to create enhanced product image backgrounds

📸 Instagram updates Reminder Ads can now be created directly in Ads Manager and run in Stories

💰 TikTok creators are leveraging Facebook as a significant revenue stream, with some earning tens of thousands of dollars

Meta's Q3: 23% Revenue Increase Helped by Ad Spend Recovery

Meta reported its Q3 earnings yesterday and it was good news indeed for the company which benefitted from both a return of ad spend and a reduction in headcount.

The company said revenue was up 23% and profit more than doubled. That tracks with results from Google and Snap, also reporting rising ad sales after revenue declined in the previous two quarters.

And Meta’s large-scale layoffs (cutting about a third of its workforce) helped too — expenses were down 7%.

The company did warn that it was seeing some “softening” in ad spend, especially around the time of the attack on Israel. They said the slump was similar to what they felt around the time of the Ukraine invasion.

But overall, they expect more increased spend in the months to come.

Threads Adds Polls and GIFs; Now Nearly 100M Users

One growing asset of Meta’s is Threads

The app continues to grow, at the expense of its arch-nemesis X.

And Meta is working fast to build more things into it. This morning, they added polls and GIFs which you can add to posts now.

It might have been rolled out a little too fast, though — polls when viewed through the web don’t show up at all, which was a little embarassing when Mark Zuckerberg himself posted a poll, and the replies were like “Are you okay? This is blank!”

You can have up to four choices, and the polls last 24 hours. You have to vote to see the results, and if you do vote in one, you’ll get a notification to see the results.

The GIF integration is about what you think it is — a search on Giphy right inside the app. The UI will also show what GIFs are trending.

Still no word on when ads will start showing up, or when an API will be in place so posting on Threads can be added to marketers’ existing workflows.

Meta says Threads will be part of the wider fediverse, allowing full connectivity to platforms like Mastodon and Pixelfed.

In its quarterly results, it says the app now has just under 100 million monthly users — that’s about 1/6th the size of X now.

Amazon’s New AI Will Add Backgrounds to Your Product Images

Amazon is launching a new AI tool to help advertisers create more compelling backgrounds for their products.

Currently in beta, the tool allows advertisers to upload a photo, type a description of the desired background, choose a theme, and click "Generate." It offers room for tweaking and testing multiple versions for better ad performance.

Amazon’s example was an autumn-themed kitchen table setting featuring a toaster. It wasn’t perfect, though — there was a random fork in the image.

The move is part of Amazon's broader push into generative AI to simplify the ad-creation process.

Major companies like Nestlé and Unilever are already using similar tools, like ChatGPT and DALL-E.

Amazon claims its internal numbers show the tool can boost click-through rates by up to 40%. (“Up to” being the key phrase there, of course.)

This follows other AI efforts by Amazon, including tools to help sellers write product descriptions and summarize customer reviews.

Instagram’s Reminder Ads Now Available in Stories

Instagram has announced an upgrade to its Reminder Ads. If you’re not familiar with these, these let users sign up for phone reminder notifications of events like live-streams, product launches, and the likes.

Reminder Ads were launched in March, but until now they’ve only been available as a Feed placement. Now, they are expanding to Stories as well.

Also — this might be bigger news — you can now create these in Ads Manager. Previously, marketers had to kind of hack an ad together by posting it as organic content, then applying a boost budget to it after.

Reminder Ads actually send people three reminders: Once on the day before, another 15 minutes prior to the start time, and the last one just before the event starts.

Content Creators Earning Big on… (checks notes) Facebook?!

Facebook may seem outdated to younger users, but for content creators, it's a treasure trove of untapped earnings.

There’s a great piece in BusinessInsider.com today about it — definitely worth a read.

One food blogger calls Facebook a "cash cow." She's not alone.

Morgann Book, with 2.8 million TikTok followers, made $93,000 on Facebook in less than a year. Another quoted in the piece: more than $60,000 a month from the platform.

One of the reasons Facebook is lucrative is because of its older user base, which is more willing to spend. Facebook’s audience has more buying power, making it ideal for those who make money through affiliate commissions.

According to a Facebook exec, they are scaling their money-making tools, particularly those focused on Reels.

So, while it might be tempting to write off Facebook as "dead," for content creators, it's very much alive and kicking.

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