Meta’s trajectory over the past few years has been defined by its response to Apple’s App Tracking Transparency, or ATT, privacy policy, with its recovery serving as a blueprint for success in the modern digital advertising operating environment. And in adapting to ATT, Meta may have executed one of the most remarkable, wholesale business model transitions in modern corporate history.

The company transformed the core engagement model of its two flagship products, Facebook and Instagram, while re-engineering the digital advertising infrastructure that serves as the singular revenue engine of its business. And in doing so, Meta grew its stock price from a low point of less than $100 in February 2023 -- a level the company hadn't seen since 2016 -- to over $600 today.

How did Meta go from a 4% year-over-year revenue decline in Q3 2022, with Mark Zuckerberg earnestly entreating investors to remain patient, to 25% revenue growth in Q3 2023? And what catalyzed both of these inflections? In this podcast, I’ll tell the story of Meta’s renaissance: the factors that led to the company’s tumultuous decline in 2022 and, critically, what the company changed to invigorate growth in 2023 and 2024.

Resources referenced in this podcast:

• Understanding conversion optimization in digital advertising
• Facebook’s App Event Optimization tool showcases the power of its data in Q1 earnings
• Digital Advertising, Demand Routing, and the Millionaires’ Mall
• The changing face of mobile marketing with event-based bidding
• Facebook may take 7% revenue hit from Apple privacy changes
• The App Tracking Transparency recession
• The perilous mythology of Brand Marketing for digital products
• The big economy of small advertisers
• Evaluating the Impact of Privacy Regulation on E-Commerce Firms: Evidence from Apple's App Tracking Transparency (working paper)
• Unpacking Meta’s pivot to an open graph and short-form video
• Meta Platforms, Inc. (META) Morgan Stanley 2024 Technology, Media & Telecom Conference (Transcript)
• Unpacking Meta’s Q2 2022 earnings: measurement still looms large
• Is CAPI future-proof?
• Meta’s AEM update and the disappearing IP address
• Understanding Google’s Universal App Campaign (UAC) changes
• What comes next after Facebook’s VO campaign strategy?
• Generative AI for ad creative: five value milestones

Thanks to the sponsors of this week’s episode of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast:

• Vibe. Vibe is the leading Streaming TV ad platform for small and medium-sized businesses looking for actionable advertising campaign performance.
• INCRMNTAL⁠⁠. True attribution measures incrementality, always on.

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