META EYES B2B
Meta, the home of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, has taken up residence at its new home in Ballsbridge, in repurposed office buildings extending to 340,000 sq. ft behind what used to be AIB Bankcentre. Still empty fronting onto Merrion Road are two adjacent sixstorey office buildings, constructed over three levels of basement and connected by a glass bridge, on the site of what used to be AIB’s headquarters.
Meta signed up to a 25-year lease for the 375,000 sq. ft Fibonacci Square development in 2018 and is now seeking to sub-let the office space. That may take some time, and Meta can afford the hit. The social media giant shunned the Fibonacci space after deciding to trim staff numbers last year, though there are still 66,100 employees on the payroll, including around c.2,000 in Dublin 4.
Meta trading has been gangbusters in 2023, with revenue up 12% in the first three quarters of the year to $95bn. Net profit for the nine months was $25bn, or €600m profit per week in our money.
On hand to wish Meta Ireland CEO Anne O’Leary well at the office opening was enterprise minister Simon Coveney, who tried out the latest RayBan Meta smart glasses, which have Meta AI built in. The minister can ask the glasses questions and it’ll answer them right in his ear. ‘When will I be Taoiseach?’ might be a stretch for the AI assistant.
Metaverse investment is still high on the agenda for Meta, but the company’s core focus is deploying AI into the social media platforms. For instance, Meta says that in 2023 AI-driven feed recommendations have delivered a 7% increase in time users spend on Facebook, and a 6% increase on Instagram. AI also informs Advantage+ creative tools that optimise images and text in ads, and the company says Advantage+ shopping campaigns currently have an annual run rate of $10bn.
Minister Simon Coveney tries out Ray-Ban smart glasses with Meta Ireland CEO Anne O’Leary
Mark Zuckerberg stated recently that business messaging will be the next major pillar of the business. Meta already has Click-to-Message ads across its three platforms, and the Meta CEO instanced the fact that 60% of people on WhatsApp in India message a business app account. In India, where labour is cheap, many of those engagements receive a personalised response, while in this part of the world the response is boilerplate.
According to the Facebook founder: “I think that this is going to be a really big opportunity for our new business AIs that we hope will enable any business to easily set up an AI that people can message to help with commerce and support. Making business AIs work for more businesses is going to be an important focus for us into 2024.”