AI Is Magnifying Google and Meta’s Edge in Ads

We could see a brief shift away from obsessive AI talk this week. On Wednesday, Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg is due to testify in the Los Angeles trial hearing a lawsuit filed by a young California woman against big tech firms, namely Google and Meta. The woman claims her social media addiction led to depression and suicidal thoughts, as we described here. Last week, one of Zuckerberg’s lieutenants, Instagram chief Adam Mosseri, testified in the trial. 

For all the discomfort Zuckerberg might feel on the witness stand, his business is doing gangbusters, as we’ve reported. You couldn’t say the same for Pinterest, whose stock plunged 17% on Friday to close at $15.42, the lowest since the 2020 pandemic-triggered market crash, and several dollars below its 2019 IPO price of $19. A reaction to Pinterest’s weak ad sales in the fourth quarter, the sell-off cast a pall on a company that seemed to have rediscovered its mojo since CEO Bill Ready took the reins in 2022. Now you might wonder whether Pinterest is about to become another Snap, forever stalled as a subscale social media player. That would be a harsh fate: The Snapchat owner’s fourth-quarter ad revenue growth was 5%, bringing its full-year growth rate to just 5.8%, nearly half its 2024 growth rate.