There was a time, not so long ago, when the very notion of a single company commanding a quarter of a trillion dollars in annual advertising revenue would have seemed like the sort of figure reserved for the gross domestic products of small European nations. That time, it appears, has passed.

Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, is expected to generate $240 billion in advertising revenue this year, according to a new forecast from WARC Media. That figure represents growth of more than 22 percent over 2025, when the company's advertising business brought in $196 billion — itself a figure that would have seemed implausible a decade ago.

The engine behind this continued expansion, according to analysts, is artificial intelligence. Meta has committed to spending as much as $600 billion on A.I. development through 2028, an investment that has already begun to reshape how advertisers use its platforms. In the first quarter of this year, ad impressions grew 19 percent while average prices rose 12 percent — a combination that suggests the company has found ways to make its existing real estate more valuable rather than simply cramming more advertisements into users' feeds.

"Meta's flywheel is spinning faster than ever," wrote Alex Brownsell, the head of content at WARC, employing the sort of mechanical metaphor that has become obligatory in such reports.

(One might note that flywheels, once they begin spinning out of control, tend to cause considerable damage.)

Mr. Brownsell acknowledged as much, observing that investors have grown concerned about plateauing user growth. Meta reported 3.56 billion daily users across its platforms in the most recent quarter — a figure that, remarkably, represented a slight decline from the previous period.

Facebook, the original product that Mr. Zuckerberg built in a Harvard dormitory more than two decades ago, still accounts for 60 percent of Meta's advertising revenue. Instagram contributes the remaining 40 percent.

The forecast calls for growth to slow to 12 percent by 2027. In most industries, that would be cause for celebration. On Wall Street, it may register as disappointment.

Original story published in MediaPost: "Meta 2026 Ad Forecast: Approaching A Quarter Trillion Dollars"