Financial listings

Video star?

Facebook is increasingly focused on promoting user-generated and advertiser-created videos as a source of new mobile advertising revenue.

The strategy appears to be working. While Madison Avenue is not known for risky experiments, advertisers are already testing the waters with live video. General Motors, for example, launched its electric Chevy Bolt EV through Facebook Live last year. Facebook’s latest quarterly earnings, due out today, should provide fresh insight into the social media giant’s advertising sales trends.

Eye on the Fed

The Federal Reserve is scheduled to deliver an update on its interest rate policy today.

After keeping its benchmark short-term rate near zero for eight years, the central bank raised it modestly in December 2015 and then waited a full year before raising it again to a still-low level last December. The Fed has indicated it expects another three rate hikes this year, while stressing that any rate moves would depend on the economy’s performance.

More closures?

Wall Street predicts that cigarette maker Altria Group’s latest earnings and revenue were essentially flat versus the same quarter a year earlier.

The maker of Marlboro, Virginia Slims, Parliament and other cigarettes is due to report its fourth-quarter financial results today. Investors will be listening for an update on the company’s sales trends and for any word on whether it will expand plans to close plants in Pennsylvania and Illinois by early next year.