Well, ad revenue is gonna be off a cliff in the next quarterly earnings, but I don't think that's going to be a surprise. Good thing they have so much cash saved up.

Amazon is going to have big profits.

IT's clear, though, that GOOG and FB are losing major ad clients. The entire travel industry is not advertising and they spent bank trying to convince you to try some new hotel chain.

For a few quarters. They'll survive and be back where they are now when the economy bounces back (whenever that may be). They could take a 100% cut for several quarters without cutting expenses. Small ad companies are the ones that will really suffer. They don't have Google's deep pockets and diversification.

Until then people might learn that an online experience without ads is possible.

The current online experience is not remotely possible without ads. I'm willing to wager that the vast majority of content that you consume online is advertising supported, not directly supported by you. All of that is gonna start going away without advertising revenue.

>The current online experience is not remotely possible without ads

The current online experience is horrendous because of the ad industry.

until a lot of the sites go belly up, as well as many of their content creators.

Facebook will be in a great position with people having more and more phone time due to the quarantine. Might be a short term hit but a big boost down the road

Facebook doesn't live off views, they live off ad spend. Unless people continue to use it more when they have to go back to work, I don't believe FB will profit here.

Big tech companies like Google and Facebook are seeing record usage (i.e. increased costs) at exactly the same time that advertising revenue is plunging. YouTube watches are at record highs while pays per view might be at record lows. This just means that the expenses go up even as revenue falls. It's not a good thing for profitability.

That's why they've stockpiled $105B and $55B in cash respectively, though. Facebook could run the company for 1.5 years if their revenue went to zero; Google could run it for 2 years. They know how the business works and position themselves to weather and profit from downturns.

Some weaker shareholders may sell if they're only interested in quarterly numbers, but in the long term their revenues go back up to what their userbase justifies.

Maybe I am missing something, but how will it be a big boost?

Most users who use Messenger, Instagram and FB already are familiar with the platform. Them using it more during the lockdown is not introducing them to new features or new content.

It is unlike a product like Netflix, where you delve more into their content (ie international stuff u may have not ventured in) or Zoom, which some ppl may not have known about previously.

Wait until the political ads start to pick up the slack.

Cheap ad space and a serious need to own the libs? You better believe we'll be seeing the propaganda machine roll out in the next ~6 months.

aren't "the libs" outspending trump atleast 2:1?