Meta provides update on Meta AI expansion, Zoom details Workplace innovations and other notable stories from this week
Welcome to “StockTok,” The Fly’s weekly recap of Wall Street’s reactions to social media stock news.
ADVERTISING WEEK:
At Advertising Week 2024, Meta Platforms (META) is announcing new ways for advertisers to improve their campaign performance with updates to its video ecosystem, creator content and suite of generative AI ad creative tools. Meta blogged in part, earlier: “We’re rolling out new tools to help improve partnership ads performance on Reels – on average, adding partnership ads to business-as-usual ads reduced CPAs by 19% across all the tests….The new, full-screen Video Tab gives people the power to explore the videos they love – whether they be Reels, longer videos, or Live content – all in one place…With this change on Facebook, advertisers will continue to benefit from our AI-enabled investments in ad delivery and ranking models… we are expanding the suite of tools and introducing video generative AI features, to support businesses along the entire ad creation journey…Now, for the first time, you can generate video creative from your single static image without any existing video assets on Instagram Reels…some advertisers have been using this tool to repurpose a previous well-performing static ad image to make the ad creative more dynamic and engaging… we’re announcing that advertisers can now integrate creator content into their collections ads on Reels and additional surfaces, with the two account handles appearing together, powered by their Advantage+ Catalog…Lastly, to make it as seamless as possible for advertisers to integrate creators across their advertising strategies, we’re consolidating partnership ads tools into a single page within Ads Manager, called Partnership Ads Hub.”
ZOOM WORKPLACE:
Smita Hashim, chief product officer for Zoom (ZM), blogged in part: “…We’re excited to announce even more innovations that will make Zoom Workplace a true AI-first work platform… AI Companion 2.0 will be able to pull in information from interactions across Zoom Workplace and … third-party information sources like Microsoft (MSFT) Outlook, Microsoft Office files, Gmail (GOOG,GOOGL), and Google Calendar to answer specific questions about your work, summarize your unread messages etc…AI Companion 2.0 will even be able to look up information on the web to help answer your questions in and out of meetings…Our custom AI Companion add-on, coming in 2025, will allow you to tailor AI Companion to your organization’s needs… You’ll be able to bring in additional third-party applications like Atlassian (TEAM), Jira & Confluence, Glean, Workday (WDAY), Zendesk, ServiceNow (NOW), Box (SQ) , Asana (ASAN), Hubspot (HUBS), and more…AI Companion will be able to help you book a meeting room in Workspace Reservation by recommending options based on your prior reservations and the meeting participants in the office that day… AI Companion will be able to help you create content, generate surveys, and answer employee questions in Workvivo.Our AI-first solutions extend beyond your workday to improve the services you provide to your customers and prospects. We’re excited to announce the following capabilities coming to Zoom Business Services in the coming months… “
Meta has shared its plan to open up access to Meta AI in more countries and languages throughout the rest of the year. The company is rolling out Meta AI to 21 new locales around the world, starting today with the United Kingdom, Brazil and more countries in Latin America and Asia. It’s coming soon to the Middle East for the first time, too. Meta is also adding support today for Tagalog and for more languages in the coming weeks, including Arabic, Indonesian, Thai and Vietnamese. Rolling out today: Brazil, Bolivia, Guatemala, Paraguay, Philippines, and the United Kingdom-plus support for Tagalog. Coming soon: Algeria, Egypt, Indonesia, Iraq, Jordan, Libya, Malaysia, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Thailand, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates, Vietnam and Yemen-plus support for Arabic, Indonesian, Thai and Vietnamese. Following this gradual rollout, Meta AI will be available in 43 countries and a dozen languages. Today’s update also includes the rollout of Meta AI on Ray-Ban Meta glasses in the U.K. and Australia.
EXPLOITING THE YOUTH:
California Attorney General Rob Bonta and New York Attorney General Letitia James co-led a bipartisan coalition of 14 attorneys general in filing separate enforcement actions against TikTok for violations of state consumer protection laws. Filed in Santa Clara County Superior Court, Attorney General Bonta’s action alleges that TikTok exploits and harms young users and deceives the public about the social media platform’s dangers. The action seeks significant penalties, as well as injunctive and monetary relief, to address TikTok’s misconduct. “Our investigation has revealed that TikTok cultivates social media addiction to boost corporate profits. TikTok intentionally targets children because they know kids do not yet have the defenses or capacity to create healthy boundaries around addictive content,” said Attorney General Rob Bonta. “When we look at the youth mental health crisis and the revenue machine TikTok has created, fueled by the time and attention of our young people, it’s devastatingly obvious: Our children and teens never stood a chance against these social media behemoths. TikTok must be held accountable for the harms it created in taking away the time – and childhoods – of American children.”
NEW AD PLACEMENTS:
Snap (SNAP) announced: “Today, we are excited to begin testing two new advertising placements on Snapchat together with our launch partners: Sponsored Snaps with Disney (DIS), and Promoted Places with McDonalds (MCD) and Taco Bell (YUM). These new placements are a natural extension of the way people already engage with businesses on Snapchat and help advertisers expand their reach with the Snapchat community across two of the most widely and frequently used parts of our service. Sponsored Snaps enable businesses to engage their customers through visual messaging, by delivering a full-screen vertical video Snap directly to Snapchatters. Snapchatters opt-in to opening the Snap and can reply by sending a message directly to the advertiser or using the call-to-action to open a predetermined link. Sponsored Snaps are visually distinct from other Snaps in the inbox, and are not delivered with a push notification. If Sponsored Snaps are left unviewed, they will be removed from the inbox. Promoted Places highlight sponsored places of interest on the Snap Map, helping our community discover places that they want to visit.”
SHARE SALE:
In a regulatory filing, Zoom CFO Kelly Steckelberg disclosed the sale of 8,901 class A common shares of the company on October 2 at a price of $67.7942 per share.
Meta said in a blog post: “We’re excited to premiere Meta Movie Gen, our breakthrough generative AI research for media, which includes modalities like image, video, and audio. Our latest research demonstrates how you can use simple text inputs to produce custom videos and sounds, edit existing videos, and transform your personal image into a unique video. Movie Gen outperforms similar models in the industry across these tasks when evaluated by humans. Our first wave of generative AI work started with the Make-A-Scene series of models that enabled the creation of image, audio, video, and 3D animation. With the advent of diffusion models, we had a second wave of work with Llama Image foundation models, which enabled higher quality generation of images and video, as well as image editing. Movie Gen is our third wave, combining all of these modalities and enabling further fine-grained control for the people who use the models in a way that’s never before been possible. Similar to previous generations, we anticipate these models enabling various new products that could accelerate creativity… As we continue to improve our models and move toward a potential future release, we’ll work closely with filmmakers and creators to integrate their feedback. By taking a collaborative approach, we want to ensure we’re creating tools that help people enhance their inherent creativity in new ways they may have never dreamed would be possible.”
INDIA LAUNCH:
Zoom Video (ZM) announced the launch of its Zoom Phone in India, commencing with the availability of Zoom Phone service with native India phone numbers in the Maharashtra Telecom Circle. Zoom Phone brings multinational corporations with a domestic presence and homegrown companies unrivaled simplicity and modern functionality to their distributed hybrid workforce, as well as global native coverage in 50 countries and territories. The native phone number support will be available starting with the Maharashtra Telecom Circle, followed by Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Mumbai and Delhi telecom circles, covering all the major technology centers in India.
BMO Capital raised the firm’s price target on Meta Platforms. The firm is adjusting its model to reflect the outsized near-term contributions from Political ad spending as well as regulatory TikTok uncertainty, the analyst tells investors in a research note. BMO warns however that its expert ad channel checks indicate that Meta’s 1x revenue tailwinds are fading while the CPG/Leisure verticals are weakening, also noting that its own forecasts for FY25 capex for the company are at $50B vs. $46B for the Street.
KeyBanc increased its price target on Pinterest (PINS). The firm’s checks suggest the ad market remained solid in Q3. Coupled with more favorable movements in several key currencies, KeyBanc expects to see upside to Street revenue and profitability forecasts at Pinterest. While the firm doubts companies guide aggressively into Q4 amid macro instability and a shorter holiday selling season, it believes product cycles at Pinterest will likely sustain solid growth into 2025.
KeyBanc boosted the firm’s price target on Meta. The firm’s checks suggest the ad market remained solid in Q3. Coupled with more favorable movements in several key currencies, KeyBanc expects to see upside to Street revenue and profitability forecasts at Meta. Further, the firm believes product cycles at Meta will likely sustain solid growth into 2025.
Jefferies initiated coverage of Reddit (RDDT). The firm estimates the company’s EBITDA more than doubles in the next two years to $450M, 12% above the 2026 consensus, driven by “peer-high” growth in users and a nascent opportunity to close the monetization gap to peers. The analyst also anticipates additional high-margin data licensing deals as expanding use-cases for generative artificial intelligence increase the value of Reddit’s database of contextual content.
JPMorgan upped the firm’s price target on Reddit. The firm updated Reddit estimates ahead of Q3 results to reflect recent positive trends. The company’s tone has been upbeat through Q3 and with the share lock-up expiration behind it, likely upside to estimates, and potential for new large language mode data licensing deals, Reddit has become a much more frequent topic of discussion with investors, the analyst told investors in a research note. However, JPMorgan believes the stock price reflects this recent enthusiasm.
Wells Fargo lowered the firm’s price target on Snap. Wells Fargo sees an in line to slightly better print and Q4 guidance for Snap, the analyst tells investors in a research note. The firm views the app relaunch as “critical” to engagement acceleration, and believes investors remain cautious with concerns on a potential adverse impact on 2025 revenue.
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Originally Posted October 9, 2024 – StockTok: Attorneys general in 14 states file enforcement actions against TikTok
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