10 Best Advertising Stocks to Buy According to Short Sellers

4. Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META)

Short Interest as % of  Shares Outstanding: 1.1%

Number of Hedge Fund Investors In Q2 2024: 219

Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META) is one of the biggest social media companies in the world. It is also the social media firm mentioned in our introduction, and its user base of roughly 3.79 billion people means that without Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META), the advertising industry significantly shrinks. The firm offers a variety of products to two kinds of advertisers on its platform. These cater to advertising firms that are running campaigns for big businesses and small and medium businesses that rely on platforms such as the Facebook Marketplace. In the fiercely competitive AI race among big tech, a large chunk of Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META)’s hypothesis depends on its ability to monetize AI and use the technologies to improve user experience and create new products for advertisers. This is in addition to the firm’s ability to retain social media users amidst trend shifts among Gen Z.

Polen Capital mentioned Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META) in its Q2 2024 investor letter. Here is what the firm said:

“Meta Platforms delivered robust results in the period, with revenue growth accelerating in the first quarter. However, revenue comparisons for Meta will become more difficult from here, and its guidance for 2Q revenue fell below market expectations. After the company’s “year of efficiency,” where it cut costs in its core business, management is now indicating another ramp-up in GenAI and metaverse spending, spurring concerns about future profit margins. Metaverse spending, by our calculations, is now over $20 billion per year with little to no expected return on the foreseeable horizon.”