What Meta's Q2 2026 results say about the ad market you buy into

The numbers Meta reported on 29 July 2026

Meta published its second quarter 2026 results on 29 July 2026, covering April to June. The fuller detail is in its Form 10-Q for the quarter, signed the same day. All comparisons below are with the same period in 2025, as Meta states them.

For the six months to 30 June 2026, the 10-Q gives advertising revenue up 30%, ad impressions up 16% and average price per ad up 12%. On the results call, chief financial officer Susan Li put ad revenue growth at 26% once currency movements are removed.

"Daily active people" is Meta's estimate of the number of individuals who use at least one of Facebook, Instagram, Messenger or WhatsApp on a given day. The 10-Q says the figure is an estimate with a margin of error of roughly 3%.

Impressions and price per ad by region

The 10-Q charts both measures by where the person who saw the ad is located. The regional picture is far less even than the worldwide one.

Meta's Rest of World region covers Africa, Latin America and the Middle East. For comparison, the same charts show worldwide impressions up 19% and price per ad up 12% in the quarter ended 31 March 2026, and up 11% and 9% in the quarter ended 30 June 2025. So impressions grew more slowly than in the previous quarter, while price growth held at the same rate.

What Meta said drove the changes

These are Meta's own explanations, from the 10-Q and from Susan Li's remarks on the call.

• More impressions: growth in users and in how much they use the apps, plus Meta showing ads more often. Impressions grew in every region, most of all in Asia-Pacific.
• Higher price per ad: more advertiser demand, which Meta believes mostly reflects ads performing better because of its targeting and measurement tools. Favourable exchange rates also helped, and on the call Li added better economic conditions than a year earlier.
• What held the average down: a larger share of impressions came from regions and products that earn less per ad. The 10-Q names Reels as one such product.
• Which advertisers: the 10-Q says online commerce was the largest contributor to the increase in advertising revenue.

The 10-Q adds that Meta expects future advertising revenue to come from a combination of price and impressions. It gives no figures for either.

What Meta said about its AI ad tools

Management gave several adoption figures on the call. They are Meta's claims about its own products, and none of them has been independently checked.

• Advantage+ end-to-end campaigns passed an annual revenue run-rate of $75 billion in the quarter.
• More than 9 million small businesses use at least one of Meta's generative AI ad creative tools.
• Use of image generation more than doubled in the quarter. It can now create still images from video assets.
• Model changes that include GEM produced an 8.3% increase in ad clicks and a 15.7% uplift in conversions on Facebook, according to Li.
• Meta began using large language models to choose candidate ads, under the name Meta Generative Recommender.

We have covered what GEM is and what Advantage+ creative does to your ads separately.

What average price per ad does and does not tell you

The 10-Q defines average price per ad as total advertising revenue divided by the number of ads delivered, whatever the advertiser was paying for. That makes it a single figure for every advertiser, country, placement and objective at once.

What a rising average does tell you:

• Across Meta as a whole, advertisers paid more per ad shown than a year earlier. In an auction, that points to more money competing for each impression on average.
• Supply grew as well. Meta showed 14% more ads, so the rise in spending was not only a rise in price.
• Conditions differ sharply by region. A 20% rise in the US and Canada and a 1% rise in Asia-Pacific are different markets.

What it does not tell you:

• It is not your CPM. Your cost per thousand impressions depends on your audience, placements, objective, time of year and how your ad performs in the auction.
• It is not a like-for-like price. The average moves when the mix of ads changes. More Reels and more impressions in lower-priced regions pull it down even if nobody pays less. Exchange rates move it too.
• A regional figure is not a country figure. Asia-Pacific groups many very different markets, so a 1% rise there says little about any one of them, Australia included.
• It is not your cost per result. Meta attributes the rise to ads performing better. If that is right, an advertiser can pay more per impression and the same or less per sale. Whether that holds for you is something only your own account can show.

What to do with this

1. 01

   Measure your own year-on-year change

   In Ads Manager, compare April to June 2026 with April to June 2025 for CPM and for cost per result. That is your version of Meta's figure, and it may look nothing like 12%.
2. 02

   Judge cost per result, not cost per impression

   A higher CPM that comes with a better conversion rate is not a problem. A flat CPM with falling conversions is.
3. 03

   Work on the part you control

   You cannot change the market average. You can change how your ad does in the auction, where a more relevant ad wins for less. That comes down to testing different creative and replacing ads as they tire.
4. 04

   Read regional figures for the region you sell in

   If you advertise in more than one region, expect different cost trends in each and review them separately.

Sources

• Meta Platforms: Meta Reports Second Quarter 2026 Results, press release, 29 July 2026
• Meta Platforms: Form 10-Q for the quarter ended 30 June 2026, US Securities and Exchange Commission, signed 29 July 2026
• Meta Platforms: second quarter 2026 results conference call transcript, 29 July 2026