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The Zacks Analyst Blog Highlights Meta Platforms, Alphabet and Amazon
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For Immediate Release
Chicago, IL – December 29, 2025 – Zacks.com announces the list of stocks featured in the Analyst Blog. Every day the Zacks Equity Research analysts discuss the latest news and events impacting stocks and the financial markets. Stocks recently featured in the blog include: Meta Platforms (META - Free Report) , Alphabet (GOOGL - Free Report) and Amazon (AMZN - Free Report) .
Here are highlights from Friday’s Analyst Blog:
Meta Platforms' AI Push to Drive Top-Line Growth: More Upside Ahead?
Meta Platforms is infusing AI to improve content recommendations and ad ranking. This is helping the company keep users across its platform engaged. AI recommendations that deliver higher quality and more relevant content are expected to drive engagement. Vibes, META’s next-generation AI creation tools and content experience, is gaining traction. The company is using Meta AI (currently used by more than one billion people) to boost user experience. Business AI is also gaining traction with more than one billion active threads between people and businesses across its messaging platforms.
The ad business is benefiting from an improved AI ranking system. Annual run rate for META’s complete end-to-end AI-powered ad tools has passed $60 billion. In the third quarter of 2025, the average price per ad increased 10% year over year, benefiting from increased advertiser demand, largely driven by improved ad performance. Meta Platforms’ initiatives to unify different models into simpler, more general models, which drive both better performance and efficiency, bode well for the company’s top-line growth.
Meta Platforms and its advertising peers, Alphabet and Amazon, are expected to absorb more than 50% of the projected global ad spending this year and 56.2% in 2026. The company is also spending heavily on AI research, models, and infrastructure. META now expects 2025 capital spending between $70 billion and $72 billion compared with the previous guidance of $66-$72 billion range. For 2026, META expects significant growth in capital expenditure in dollar terms compared with 2025.
Meta Platforms expects fourth-quarter 2025 total revenues to be in the range of $56-59 billion. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for fourth-quarter 2025 revenues is pegged at $58.4 billion, indicating 20.7% growth from the figure reported in the year-ago quarter.
META Faces Tough Competition in Ad Space
Meta Platforms is facing tough competition from Alphabet and Amazon.
Alphabet’s Search business is benefiting from AI infusion. The company has been actively embedding AI, especially within Search, to enhance user experience, provide better AI-focused features and consequently improve ad performance. AI Overviews and AI Mode are driving overall queries and commercial queries, thereby driving monetization opportunities. The addition of shopping capabilities in AI Mode is now helping people shop conversationally in Search. Alphabet has added new AI features in Search that help users build travel plans. This is driving GOOGL's advertising revenue growth.
In the third quarter of 2025, Amazon’s advertising revenues increased 24% year over year to $17.7 billion. The company announced partnerships allowing advertisers to buy ad space on Netflix, Spotify and SiriusXM Media through Amazon Ads, expanding its advertising reach beyond its own properties. The strong performance in advertising reflected successful AI-powered optimization of the platform and growing market share in digital advertising, providing a high-margin revenue stream that supports investments in other parts of the business.
Meta Platforms shares have climbed 11.3% in the trailing 12 months, underperforming the broader Zacks Computer and Technology sector’s return of 24.6%.
Meta Platforms stock is trading at a premium, with a forward 12-month price/sales of 7.22X compared with the broader sector’s 6.62X. META has a Value Score of C.
The Zacks Consensus Estimate for fourth-quarter 2025 earnings is pegged at $8.16 per share, unchanged over the past 30 days, suggesting 1.75% year-over-year growth.
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Past performance is no guarantee of future results. Inherent in any investment is the potential for loss. This material is being provided for informational purposes only and nothing herein constitutes investment, legal, accounting or tax advice, or a recommendation to buy, sell or hold a security. No recommendation or advice is being given as to whether any investment is suitable for a particular investor. It should not be assumed that any investments in securities, companies, sectors or markets identified and described were or will be profitable. All information is current as of the date of herein and is subject to change without notice. Any views or opinions expressed may not reflect those of the firm as a whole. Zacks Investment Research does not engage in investment banking, market making or asset management activities of any securities. These returns are from hypothetical portfolios consisting of stocks with Zacks Rank = 1 that were rebalanced monthly with zero transaction costs. These are not the returns of actual portfolios of stocks. The S&P 500 is an unmanaged index. Visit https://www.zacks.com/performance for information about the performance numbers displayed in this press release.
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The Zacks Analyst Blog Highlights Meta Platforms, Alphabet and Amazon
For Immediate Release
Chicago, IL – December 29, 2025 – Zacks.com announces the list of stocks featured in the Analyst Blog. Every day the Zacks Equity Research analysts discuss the latest news and events impacting stocks and the financial markets. Stocks recently featured in the blog include: Meta Platforms (META - Free Report) , Alphabet (GOOGL - Free Report) and Amazon (AMZN - Free Report) .
Here are highlights from Friday’s Analyst Blog:
Meta Platforms' AI Push to Drive Top-Line Growth: More Upside Ahead?
Meta Platforms is infusing AI to improve content recommendations and ad ranking. This is helping the company keep users across its platform engaged. AI recommendations that deliver higher quality and more relevant content are expected to drive engagement. Vibes, META’s next-generation AI creation tools and content experience, is gaining traction. The company is using Meta AI (currently used by more than one billion people) to boost user experience. Business AI is also gaining traction with more than one billion active threads between people and businesses across its messaging platforms.
The ad business is benefiting from an improved AI ranking system. Annual run rate for META’s complete end-to-end AI-powered ad tools has passed $60 billion. In the third quarter of 2025, the average price per ad increased 10% year over year, benefiting from increased advertiser demand, largely driven by improved ad performance. Meta Platforms’ initiatives to unify different models into simpler, more general models, which drive both better performance and efficiency, bode well for the company’s top-line growth.
Meta Platforms and its advertising peers, Alphabet and Amazon, are expected to absorb more than 50% of the projected global ad spending this year and 56.2% in 2026. The company is also spending heavily on AI research, models, and infrastructure. META now expects 2025 capital spending between $70 billion and $72 billion compared with the previous guidance of $66-$72 billion range. For 2026, META expects significant growth in capital expenditure in dollar terms compared with 2025.
Meta Platforms expects fourth-quarter 2025 total revenues to be in the range of $56-59 billion. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for fourth-quarter 2025 revenues is pegged at $58.4 billion, indicating 20.7% growth from the figure reported in the year-ago quarter.
META Faces Tough Competition in Ad Space
Meta Platforms is facing tough competition from Alphabet and Amazon.
Alphabet’s Search business is benefiting from AI infusion. The company has been actively embedding AI, especially within Search, to enhance user experience, provide better AI-focused features and consequently improve ad performance. AI Overviews and AI Mode are driving overall queries and commercial queries, thereby driving monetization opportunities. The addition of shopping capabilities in AI Mode is now helping people shop conversationally in Search. Alphabet has added new AI features in Search that help users build travel plans. This is driving GOOGL's advertising revenue growth.
In the third quarter of 2025, Amazon’s advertising revenues increased 24% year over year to $17.7 billion. The company announced partnerships allowing advertisers to buy ad space on Netflix, Spotify and SiriusXM Media through Amazon Ads, expanding its advertising reach beyond its own properties. The strong performance in advertising reflected successful AI-powered optimization of the platform and growing market share in digital advertising, providing a high-margin revenue stream that supports investments in other parts of the business.
META’s Share Price Performance, Valuation & Estimates
Meta Platforms shares have climbed 11.3% in the trailing 12 months, underperforming the broader Zacks Computer and Technology sector’s return of 24.6%.
Meta Platforms stock is trading at a premium, with a forward 12-month price/sales of 7.22X compared with the broader sector’s 6.62X. META has a Value Score of C.
The Zacks Consensus Estimate for fourth-quarter 2025 earnings is pegged at $8.16 per share, unchanged over the past 30 days, suggesting 1.75% year-over-year growth.
Meta Platforms, Inc. price-consensus-chart | Meta Platforms, Inc. Quote
Meta Platforms currently has a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 (Strong Buy) Rank stocks here.
Free: Instant Access to Zacks' Market-Crushing Strategies
Since 2000, our top stock-picking strategies have blown away the S&P's +7.7% average gain per year. Amazingly, they soared with average gains of +48.4%, +50.2% and +56.7% per year.
Today you can tap into those powerful strategies – and the high-potential stocks they uncover – free. No strings attached.
Get all the details here >>
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Past performance is no guarantee of future results. Inherent in any investment is the potential for loss. This material is being provided for informational purposes only and nothing herein constitutes investment, legal, accounting or tax advice, or a recommendation to buy, sell or hold a security. No recommendation or advice is being given as to whether any investment is suitable for a particular investor. It should not be assumed that any investments in securities, companies, sectors or markets identified and described were or will be profitable. All information is current as of the date of herein and is subject to change without notice. Any views or opinions expressed may not reflect those of the firm as a whole. Zacks Investment Research does not engage in investment banking, market making or asset management activities of any securities. These returns are from hypothetical portfolios consisting of stocks with Zacks Rank = 1 that were rebalanced monthly with zero transaction costs. These are not the returns of actual portfolios of stocks. The S&P 500 is an unmanaged index. Visit https://www.zacks.com/performance for information about the performance numbers displayed in this press release.