Millions of American businesses – from mom-and-pop shops to big global brands – use our personalized advertising tools to reach customers and grow. In recent years, we’ve been improving the AI systems that power these tools to make them simpler and more efficient to use, and to ensure businesses get the best possible return for their ad dollars. Importantly, when the ads people see are better aligned to their interests, they have a better experience, too.
Today, we released findings from a new study we conducted that delves into the impact of our personalized ad technologies on the U.S. economy and finds that they were linked to nearly $550 billion in economic activity and 3.4 million jobs in 2024. Not only is this a positive impact on the U.S. economy as a whole, but behind the numbers are real Americans building businesses, hiring and getting hired, earning their livelihoods and supporting their communities. These findings represent a 32.5% increase in economic activity and a 10% increase in jobs compared to an identical study conducted in 2022. Currently, more than 35 million businesses in the United States use Facebook and Instagram to grow their operations every month, with more than 2 million American businesses advertising monthly across our apps to reach customers.
This study also assessed the impact of our new AI-driven advertising tools and found that they drive a 22% improvement in return on ad spend for advertisers. This means that for every dollar U.S. advertisers spend with Meta, they see a $4.52 return when they use our new AI-driven advertising tools. Of course, advertisers that don’t use these new AI-driven tools also see gains from advertising on our platforms, with each ad dollar generating an average of $3.71 in revenues across all U.S. advertisers. These figures are grounded in a large-scale randomized controlled trial that replicated methods established in partnership with UC Berkeley and was published with the National Bureau of Economic Research.
Studies like this one give us a glimpse of the immense potential of AI by examining the real impact of AI tools – businesses using them are growing. It also builds on recent academic research that shows how ads personalization delivers increased efficiency for businesses – and that when personalization is restricted, small businesses and consumers ultimately suffer.
These results underscore how our ongoing work to develop and improve our ads personalization tools and AI systems is helping America’s economy, businesses and workers. Because when businesses and economies do well, the people who power them do well too.
