Facebook is launching a dating feature

Published 3 Mins Ago

Facebook is launching a dating feature, Mark Zuckerberg announced during the keynote address at Facebook's annual F8 developer conference Tuesday.

Shares of online dating company Match sunk on the news.

The conference, often an opportunity to announce new developer tools or hardware, comes amid a broader discussion of policy and privacy for the company.

Facebook for months has been dealing with the fallout of the Cambridge Analytica data leak and questions of user privacy — a firestorm set off by reports that an app developer mishandled sensitive user information.

The social media giant in March delayed the launch of a long-reported smart speaker, according to news reports.

Facebook earnings: Amid controversy, finances appear bulletproof

July 24, 2018

Earnings: On average, analysts polled by FactSet model Facebook second-quarter earnings of $1.71. Contributors to Estimize, which crowdsources estimates from analysts, fund managers and academics, predict adjusted earnings of $1.81 a share, on average.

Revenue: Analysts estimate Facebook second-quarter sales of $13.34 billion, the bulk of which is mobile ads, according to FactSet. Mobile ads will account for sales of $11.88 billion, desktop ads will be responsible for $1.18 billion and the company’s payments and other fee segment will log $157 million. Contributors to Estimize expect total revenue of $13.56 billion.

What else to look for: For Facebook investors focused on ad performance, the key data points to look for are impression growth, or the amount of ad inventory the company ads, as well the CPM rate, or the price per thousand impressions — the cost of its ads. Historically, as ad inventory decreases, the price of its ads have gone up and vice versa.

That’s because Facebook’s ads are highly desirable and so when it reduces the availability, the price goes up. It’s basic economics, though it’s worth pointing out that not every website behaves like Facebook.

A key development during the quarter was the July launch of IGTV, or Instagram’s video platform. It’s a stand-alone app, as well as part of the Instagram app, that’s designed to let users watch “long-form” vertical video. It sounds a lot like YouTube, but for investors it means two main things: more video-ad inventory and users spending more time using Facebook products.

J.P. Morgan analyst Doug Anmuth wrote in a July note to clients that IGTV is more focused on amateur creators or “influences” for a “younger generation.” At the moment, he writes, IGTV doesn’t have ads, but Anmuth expects the new unit to continue to siphon ad money away from TV, which is roughly $180 billion, with online video ad spending clocking in at $23 billion.