Meta Wants AI Agents to Become Its Next Ad Business

THE GIST

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Meta is going all in on agentic AI as a strategy for diversifying revenue away from the core business of selling ads. This comes after CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that the idea of becoming a cloud computing business is “definitely on the table.”

If businesses bite on Meta’s AI Agents, it may convince Wall Street that the billions they’re spending on infrastructure will, one day, be worth it.

WHAT HAPPENED

On Wednesday, WSJ reported Meta launched AI agents for businesses across the company’s three most popular platforms: WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger. The AI agents will be tasked with what human assistants would do, ranging from answering customers’ queries, booking appointments, managing calendars, and even market research.

Given that Zuck and Co. jacked up total capex by 67% in 2025 — skyrocketing from $38.4 billion to $72.2 billion — only to double down this year with a monstrous new guidance of $125 billion to $145 billion, it makes sense to liquidate the entire job market for college graduates with AI agents. About 200 million small businesses use WhatsApp per Meta’s own internal numbers. The company said in December they hit over a “$2 billion annual run-rate with its paid messaging services on the platform.”

So, there’s definitely a market, but what about users?

Facebook has about 3.2 billion Monthly Active Users on Facebook, which if you believe the company’s numbers, is about 40% of all humanity. WhatsApp and Instagram have about 3 billion monthly active users, while Messenger has around 1 billion.

WHY IT MATTERS

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This matters for one reason: Meta needs customers for these businesses who will soon be using these AI agents.

If there’s no one there, there’s no amount of work an agent can do in the digital mall Facebook and Instagram have evolved into. Meta knows it has users, and that when one business starts using its agentic AI with even the slightest hint of success, the rest will follow. And in true big tech fashion, Meta will first let businesses use these agents for free, then shift to a paid subscription service with different tiers. They’ve already done this across Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp via their expanded “Meta Verified program,” which was originally created and designed to combat impersonation via a Twitter-esque blue checkmark, so this tactic of theirs shouldn’t be surprising.

Meta’s agentic AI push may also be about more than justifying AI infrastructure spend. The company’s core ad business makes up about 98% of total revenue, but cracks are emerging.

Meta saw a marginal decline of 20 million daily active users (3.56 billion daily active users vs. 3.58 billion in Q4 2025) across its platforms in the first quarter of this year, driven by geopolitical restrictions in Russia and Iran, as well as tighter regulations on teen access in markets like Australia. If these trends continue, it won’t be Meta who takes the hit first, but their advertisers. When Daily Active People (DAP) drops, the cost of ad slots spikes. This was made clear in Meta’s Q1 earnings, where the average price per ad increased by 12% year-over-year. Throw in the necessary spend for Meta’s “Meta One” (ranging from $7.99 to $49.99/month), and advertisers are getting squeezed more than ever. This could result in a mild exodus of both parties as margins get so tight that it becomes harder to turn a profit, and people continue to churn off the platform because they’re tired of being inundated with more ads than ever.

All this helped drive Meta’s advertising revenue to $55 billion in the first quarter a 33% year-over-year increase. But at there’s a point when something could break, so it’s all the more reasonable that Meta is working now to diversify its revenue for if that comes.

WHAT’S NEXT

Meta finding a secondary use case beyond ad spend for its three most popular social platforms is smart. The market will be watching Meta’s Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) and its “Other Revenue” segment, which most recently posted a 74% year-over-year increase to $855 million on the back of WhatsApp paid messaging. With AI business agents running on a consumption-based, token-driven model, Meta is effectively charging businesses for compute usage while also offsetting AI infrastructure costs and potentially capturing a cut of transactions.

As with everything in AI and data centers, it’s going to take time, but once it starts to click, Meta could end up winning the AI Agent race.