After witnessing a slowdown in daily active users (DAU) growth in the October to December quarter, Facebook’s parent Meta said India turned out to be of ‘particular strength’ for the company in the January to March quarter.
Overall, Facebook’s monthly active users (MAUs) grew to 2.94 billion up from 2.91 MAUs. On a year-on-year (YoY) basis, it increased by 3 per cent.
Daily active users (DAU) for Q1 stood at 1.96 billion, up from 1.93 billion in the previous quarter. On YoY basis, it jumped 4 per cent.
“When we look at APAC and the rest of world, it benefited from strong demand in products like click-to-messaging ads. In rest of world, growth decelerated the least of all regions. Macro conditions in Brazil improved a bit after softness in the second half of 2021. And then in APAC, it was — relative strength was pretty broad-based, but I’d call out particular strength in India, and that’s benefiting from good supply tailwinds in terms of impression growth,” Dave Wehner, Meta’s Chief Financial Officer said during the company’s Q1 earnings call.
Last quarter, responding to Facebook’s first ever DAU decline, Wehner had said, “Facebook user growth was impacted by a few headwinds in the fourth quarter. In Asia-Pacific and rest of world, we believe Covid resurgences during prior periods pulled forward user growth. User growth in India was also limited by an increase in data package pricing.”
Speaking of the global situation, Wehner added, “Growth slowed in all regions due to pricing headwinds. Currency was obviously a headwind in all the international regions. Europe decelerated very meaningfully, and the existing headwinds were compounded by the effects of obviously, the Ukraine war.”
“In North America, we have a relatively higher exposure to off-site objectives. So the targeting and measurement challenges continue to impact growth in that region more. Also, I’d note that in North America, impressions were down year-over-year in Q1. So ad impressions were down year-over-year, though the rate improved from Q4. So it was primarily a demand-driven deceleration,” he said.
Overall, Facebook Family of Apps (FoA) which includes Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, WhatsApp, and other services, grew 6 per cent YoY in MAUs touching 3.64 billion in Q1. On a consecutive quarter basis, it increased by 1.39 per cent from 3.59 billion in Q4, ended December 31, 2021.
Published on
April 29, 2022
