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Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of the company formerly called Facebook, unveiling its new name last week. Photo by Bloomberg.

Facebook, Snap Eye Commerce Expansion as Apple Roils Ads Businesses

Photo: Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of the company formerly called Facebook, unveiling its new name last week. Photo by Bloomberg.

Buffeted by Apple’s clampdown on user tracking, Facebook—now known as Meta Platforms—is moving quickly to revamp its ad business. Like its smaller rival Snap, whose business Apple’s changes affected even more, Facebook’s efforts include both ad tech modifications and a more intense focus on bringing merchants into the Facebook walled garden as a way of generating ad revenue free of Apple’s tracking restrictions.

And then there’s the blue-sky ambition of bringing advertisers to the metaverse.

Ad executives at Facebook in recent weeks have reached out to advertisers to set up “very senior-level” meetings, some of which CEO Mark Zuckerberg will attend, to educate them on its plans for the metaverse and how they might be able to operate in the immersive virtual world Zuckerberg and others hope to build, according to people familiar with the matter.

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