Meta's ad sales grew more than twice as fast as Google Search last quarter
Meta's advertising revenue rose 26% to $63.1 billion in the third quarter while Google's Search and other revenue rose 12% to $63.4 billion, CNBC calculated on Sunday, the widest gap in Meta's favor since 2021. Meta says advertisers who took its AI assistant's recommendations got almost 5% more conversions. Search is still growing, but chatbots answer questions without sending clicks, and Emarketer's Nate Elliott called that "potentially catastrophic for Google's ad business."
At $63.1 billion against $63.4 billion, the two are now almost exactly the same size. Alphabet had its worst day on record after its report, and Meta its worst month since 2022, because both are spending at a pace their ad businesses have to keep paying for: up to $205 billion of capital spending at Google this year and $145 billion at Meta. SourcesB
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This story ran in the Morning Brief of November 2nd 2026.