Social media giant Facebook says it has seen a weakening in its ads business in countries that are taking aggressive action to reduce the spread of COVID-19.
Facebook says while it has seen increased traffic, this is happening on its messaging services, and not increasing ad revenue.
The company says its business is being adversely affected due to the pandemic, like so many others around the world.
It says more people are using news feed and stories products to get updates from their family and friends.
In many of the countries hit hardest by the virus, total messaging has increased more than 50% over the last month, it notes.
Similarly, in places hit hardest by the virus, voice and video calling have more than doubled on Messenger and WhatsApp.
Facebook says in Italy, specifically: “We’ve seen up to 70% more time spent across our apps since the crisis arrived in the country. Instagram and Facebook Live views doubled in a week.
“We have also seen messaging increase over 50% and time in group calling (calls with three or more participants) increase by over 1 000% during the last month.”
Writing on the Facebook blog, Alex Schultz, VP of analytics, and Jay Parikh, VP of engineering, say COVID-19 has upended the lives of billions of people around the world and in response to this emergency, Facebook has been supporting the global public health community and working to provide people with information to help them stay safe.
“As the pandemic expands and more people practice physically distancing themselves from one another, this has also meant that many more people are using our apps.”
Earlier this month, Facebook announced it will run free adverts for the World Health Organisation, which shares credible and accurate information on COVID-19.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the social media company will give support and “millions more in ad credits” to other organisations too and Facebook will also work closely with global health experts to provide additional help if needed.
Now, Facebook says during this emergency, it is doing everything it can to keep apps fast, stable and reliable.
“Our services were built to withstand spikes during events such as the Olympics or on New Year’s Eve. However, those happen infrequently, and we have plenty of time to prepare for them. The usage growth from COVID-19 is unprecedented across the industry, and we are experiencing new records in usage almost every day,” reads the blog.
It adds: “We’re monitoring usage patterns carefully, making our systems more efficient, and adding capacity as required. To help alleviate potential network congestion, we are temporarily reducing bit rates for videos on Facebook and Instagram in certain regions.”
Meanwhile, Twitter also announced it is withdrawing its revenue and operating income guidance for the first quarter of 2020, as well as its outlook for expenses, stock-based compensation, headcount and capital expenditure for the full year.
This is also due to the growing impact of COVID-19 on the global operating and economic environment and the effect on advertiser demand.
The social networking company said while the near-term financial impact of this pandemic is rapidly evolving and difficult to measure, based on current visibility, the company expects Q1 revenue to be down slightly on a year-over-year basis.
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