Insights from Meta's Q1 Earnings: Five Tips to Boost Performance for Businesses

Today, we’re sharing some key insights on performance gains using AI-enabled ad products, video and Reels, and actions businesses can take to turn people into customers and make every marketing dollar count. This follows updates on what’s working for advertisers highlighted in our Q1 2025 earnings call on April 30th.

As Mark shared on the call, we continue to increase our investments and focus more of our resources on AI, and improved advertising and business messaging are two of the major opportunities we're focused on — in addition to more engaging experiences, Meta AI, and AI devices. In the last six months, improvements to our recommendation systems have led to a 7% increase in time spent on Facebook, 6% increase on Instagram, and 35% on Threads¹.

1. Next-Level Ads Performance Backed by AI

The insight: Three years ago, we introduced Meta Advantage+: a suite of automated ad products that use AI to help advertisers maximize campaign performance and support creative diversification strategies. Since then, we’ve continued to innovate with new AI models in ads ranking — like our new Generative Ads Recommendation model, or GEM, Andromeda and Meta Lattice — that are driving significant ad performance across our ads systems. As Susan Li, Meta’s Chief Financial Officer, shared on the earnings call, we began testing GEM for ads recommendations on Facebook Reels earlier this year and have seen up to a 5% increase in ad conversions². And, for every dollar spent with our AI-enabled Advantage+ products, we have seen advertisers generate on average $4.52 in revenue for their businesses, an increase of 22% compared to business as usual campaigns³.

The inspiration: Ben & Jerry's used Advantage+ creative to diversify its ad strategy and saw significant improvements in engagement and conversion rates. Running a Meta Advantage+ catalog ad campaign with the generative AI ad feature for background image generation turned on drove a 7% increase in link clicks, compared to using its usual creative assets.

What your business should do today: Get started by setting up a new Advantage+ campaign, which is now simpler than ever. And take a moment to review your opportunity score, a new way to understand how optimized your campaigns are and proven recommendations you can adopt in just a few clicks to help improve performance — including applying AI optimizations. In our early tests, advertisers who adopted opportunity score recommendations saw a 5% median decrease in their cost per result⁴.

2. Video: Driving the Next Era of Customer Engagement

The insight: In Q1, we saw strong growth in video consumption across both Facebook and Instagram, particularly in the US where video time spent continues to grow double-digits year-over-year⁵. We know this consumer behavior can translate into results for businesses as well: two out of three people say that Reels ads have helped them discover a new brand, product, or service⁶.

The inspiration:

Vaseline wanted to tap into this trend to elevate awareness of their Cocoa Radiant lotion among consumers. They partnered with a celebrity ambassador on a mobile-first video campaign before, during and after an awards show, and achieved record brand lift metrics:

• 12.3pts lift in Standard Ad Recall
• 5.4pts lift in Message Association
• 5.4pts lift in Consideration

What your business should do today: Make sure you’re including video in your mix of creative assets — whether you have brand or performance goals. If you need a hand, our generative AI Image Animation (now available for all advertisers) and Video Expansion (now available on Facebook Reels) features in Ads Manager can help — either by generating video creative from a single static image, or generating unseen pixels to expand aspect ratio in existing creative. We’re seeing strong adoption too: 30% more advertisers are using AI creative tools in the last quarter⁷.

3. Business Messaging: Driving Value Today and into the Future

The insight: As Mark shared, business messaging should be the next pillar of our business. He also noted that in the next few years, he expects businesses to have an AI business agent for customer support and sales. Today, WhatsApp has more than 3 billion monthly actives⁸ and Messenger is also used by more than a billion people each month⁹. And, 80% of people globally already message with a business weekly¹⁰, with 600 million daily conversations on WhatsApp, Messenger, and Instagram Direct¹¹.

The inspiration: Kitsch, a hair care and beauty company, has already been testing out Meta’s business AIs. Their VP of Growth & E-Commerce, Yingying Kuang, calls them a “game-changer,” saying, “by seamlessly answering questions and providing personalized recommendations, customers can discover their perfect hair care match right from an ad. The insights we've gained have not only deepened our understanding of customer needs, but will also inform our creative strategy — it's a whole new level of customer connection.”

What your business should do today: If you haven’t already, now is the time to set up your presence on WhatsApp, Messenger, and Instagram Direct. Test and learn with ads that click to message so potential customers can discover, connect with and learn about your business on the messaging channels where they already spend time. You can even join the beta waitlist to get early access to Meta’s business AIs.

4. Threads: A Place for Ideas that Connect People

The insight: As we shared on the call, Threads now has more than 350 million monthly actives and remains on track to become our next major social app¹² . Threads is where people are connecting over public conversation and ideas — and your business can join the conversation, with three out of four users following at least one business on Threads¹³. And just last week, we started making ads in Threads available to advertisers globally so people can deepen connections with businesses they love.

The inspiration: Wendy’s, the fast food chain, was an early tester of ads in Threads, saying “Wendy’s is known for showing up authentically where our consumers are spending their time. We’ve been active on Threads since day one, and believe it provides a space to build community and bring our brand persona to life.”

What your business should do today: The new “Threads feed” placement will be on by default within Advantage+ and Manual Placements for new campaigns leveraging Reach, Traffic, and Website conversion objectives — so set up a new campaign today to extend your campaign to Threads.

5. Creators: Influential Powerhouses

The insight: Susan shared that creators remain another big focus for us, and we’re investing in tools to help them produce the best original content on our platforms. We also know that people care about what creators have to say and look to them for inspiration. In fact, 40% of people use creator recommendations on Instagram when they’re shopping¹⁴.

The inspiration: To take advantage of this insight and generate sales, boohooMAN, the men’s clothing retailer, tested the impact of adding creator-led partnership ads to its business-as-usual creator content strategy. This resulted in a 35% increase in new customers compared to its usual ads alone.