Meta warns employees of ‘tough second half’ in internal memo

San Francisco: Meta, formerly Facebook, has warned employees to expect a tough second half of the year as the tech giant continues to weather challenges related to its core online advertising business amid a weakening economy.

A spokesperson confirmed to CNBC that Meta chief product officer Chris Cox detailed the company’s financial dilemma in an internal memo that detailed key areas where the social media giant plans to invest.

Cox reiterated statements made by Meta CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg during a call with analysts as part of the company’s first-quarter earnings report, which detailed the negative impact on the company’s business caused by a privacy update Apple made to the iPhone last year.

The Meta executive added that the company is in “serious times here and the headwinds are fierce”, underscoring that its challenges aren’t likely to vanish anytime soon, the report said.

“We need to execute flawlessly in an environment of slower growth, where teams should not expect vast influxes of new engineers and budgets,” Cox wrote.

“We must prioritise more ruthlessly, be thoughtful about measuring and understanding what drives impact, invest in developer efficiency and velocity inside the company, and operate leaner, meaner, better exciting teams.”

To offset the impact of Apple’s update, which limited Facebook’s ability to target ads to specific audiences, Cox said the company is pushing hard to make money from Instagram Reels, its TikTok competitor, and also investing in AI to drive content recommendations like TikTok does, as the company has previously said.

Meta also plans to invest in features that would make it easier for retailers to show ads to customers on its family of apps, and for employees to communicate with businesses through messaging.