The advertising market is slowing down due to the uncertainty caused by President Trump's economic policies. And we're going to hear a lot about it in the next few days as giants like Meta deliver quarterly earnings reports.
"Big Tech's moment of truth is here," Quartz's Catherine Baab writes, as "AI and tariffs are putting their trillion-dollar market caps to the test."
Meta and Microsoft both release results after the closing bell today. Wall Street analysts are generally bullish about Meta's ad sales resiliency; Wells Fargo calls the company the "steadiest ship in a brewing macro storm."
But that storm is referenced on every investor call. Shares of Snap fell more than 14% last night, despite better than expected Q1 revenue, because the company opted not to offer any guidance for Q2. "Snap cited potential constraints on advertising demand as the reason for holding off," CNBC reports.
Already there has been a measurable pullback in ad spending by Chinese e-commerce players like Temu due to Trump's tariffs. "After all, the advertising value of emphasizing low prices doesn't work quite so well when prices have nearly doubled," The Information's Martin Peers points out. Amazon and Apple report earnings tomorrow afternoon...
