FTC lawsuit filings: Instagram had ad revenues of $22B in 2020, or 26% of Meta's total revenue, $32.4B in 2021, or 27% of Meta's revenue, and $16.5B in H1 2022
The filings put a documented figure behind Instagram’s rise from the roughly $20B in ad revenue reported for 2019 to a business contributing more than a quarter of Meta’s revenue in both 2020 and 2021.
That concentration matters in the FTC case: the same record shows Instagram’s 2021 ad revenue exceeded YouTube’s reported total, as covered in the related court-filing report.
First-order effects
The filings give the FTC and Meta a clearer factual record of Instagram’s financial importance inside Meta, rather than leaving its contribution to estimates.
Meta’s investors, advertisers, and legal opponents gain visibility into a major revenue engine: $22B in 2020, $32.4B in 2021, and $16.5B in the first half of 2022.
Second-order effects
The disclosure raises the stakes of any remedy that could alter Meta’s control of Instagram, because a change to the product would affect a business responsible for more than a quarter of company revenue.
It also sharpens comparisons with other ad platforms: Instagram’s reported 2021 revenue puts pressure on rivals’ narratives about relative scale and advertiser reach.
Third-order effects
If antitrust cases increasingly expose product-level financials, regulators and markets will be better able to assess whether acquisitions created durable, concentrated profit pools.
The broader policy question shifts from an app’s user growth alone to whether control of a high-revenue ad channel can be separated without disrupting an integrated platform business.
The trend: Antitrust scrutiny of major platforms is increasingly turning internal revenue data into evidence about the economic weight of acquired products.
@mostly.borrowed.ideas
@mostly.borrowed.ideas on threads
if we attribute all ad revenue ex-IG to Facebook (not quite true but think pretty close to the truth), Facebook ad revenue grew by +18.4%, +20.1%, and +32.8% in 2019, 2020, and 2021 respectively.
@masiosare
Luis Zaldivar on threads
All your complaining about lack of reach on Instagram is literally irrelevant.
@jbillinson
Josh Billinson on threads
I wonder what percentage of Instagram's ad business is just all of the insane hyperspecific class action lawsuit sponsored posts and stories I have been getting constantly for the past year
@williecubed
Willie Chalmers III on threads
That Instagram made more ad revenue than YouTube in a year surprised me until I saw this inconvenient fact. Instagram's leverage is that it doesn't have to pay for the vast majority of content on its platform.
@chris
Chris Messina on threads
And Facebook bought Instagram for $1B in 2012.¹ Talk about ROI. 📈
@kurtwag8
Kurt Wagner on threads
more fuel for the “Instagram was the best business acquisition of all time” argument. Reminder that Zuckerberg acquired IG for just $715m in 2012.
@jason_kint
Jason Kint on x
Sad. Meta dropped Instagram revenues into a still ***sealed*** Summary Judgment motion exhibit this afternoon to wind up some stenographers and it worked of course. Not even sure those covering it know what was filed, why or when but Meta PR likely handed it to them.
@borrowed_ideas
@borrowed_ideas on x
IG's revenue was finally disclosed today in some court filings. Perhaps the most notable takeaway from this disclosure is the implied growth in Meta's “Facebook” property. If WhatsApp+ Messenger delivers in this decade, Meta's growth engine may have ample headroom left. [image]
@pkafka
Peter Kafka on threads
Ps - this may be useful context whenever anyone here asks/demands for new features from @mosseri . Even if he makes Threads really, really big - like big as pre-Elon Twitter big - it's gonna be tiny potatoes compared to his day job.