What's going on?

Facebook and investors can overcome anything, together: the social media empire announced better-than-expected quarterly earnings late on Wednesday, and its stock initially climbed 6%.

What does this mean?

There was so much time and so little to do last quarter, and Facebook was more than happy to fill the void: the company saw the number of monthly active users across its social media platforms rose by 10% compared to the year before, bringing the total to 2.9 billion. And given that it makes virtually all its money by selling users� attention to advertisers, that boost pushed its quarterly earnings above forecasts. It�ll also give the company newfound hope that it can finally move on from last year�s advertising boycott, when a number of high-profile firms � including Coca-Cola and Procter & Gamble � cut their spending on the platform in protest of some of its more� problematic policies.

Why should I care?

For markets: Digital ads are a goldmine.
The latest results from Alphabet, Snapchat, and now Facebook prove that the digital advertising market is bigger than ever these days. The pandemic, after all, has driven an unstoppable shift toward online shopping and the ads it relies on. That suits Facebook fine: its platform accounts for a quarter of all digital ad spending in the States, and its ecommerce tools � those that allow businesses to set up online stores directly on Facebook and Instagram � aren�t doing too shabbily either (tweet this).

The bigger picture: There�s no such thing as a sure thing.
Not everything�s quite so simple for the social media giant, mind you. For one thing, new privacy settings from Apple are about to make it harder for Facebook to target ads to iPhone and iPad users, potentially denting one of its most lucrative sources of ad revenue. Oh, and then there�s the little matter of the US government�s ever-growing enthusiasm for breaking up Big Tech altogether�