Meta Platforms Inc. saw its stock price lift 5% on Wednesday after the tech giant exceeded analyst expectations in its second quarter results for 2024.

Meta, which is the parent company of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, posted revenues of US$36.46 billion (A$56.01 billion) for the three months to March 31, up 27% on Q2 2023. Net income more than doubled, up 117% per cent to US$12.37 billion (A$19.00 billion). Meanwhile, the number of daily active users across Meta's Family of apps grew 7% year-on-year to 3.24 billion.

"We had a strong quarter, and Meta AI is on track to be the most used AI assistant in the world by the end of the year," said the company's founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg. "We've released the first frontier-level open source AI model, we continue to see good traction with our Ray-Ban Meta AI glasses, and we're driving good growth across our apps."

The results are the result of growth to the company's advertising business, as well as cost-cutting efforts that saw overall headcount reduced 10% in the year to March 31. Headcount now stands at 69,329.

Advertising for Q2 generated US$35.637 billion in revenue, up from $28.101 billion the same time last year, with ad impressions delivered across Meta's Family of Apps up 20%. Average price per ad increased by 6% year-over-year.

Speaking to investors on the earnings call, Zuckerberg said "advances in AI" continued to "improve the quality of recommendations and drive engagement" on Meta's platforms and would soon "evolve [Meta's] services for advertisers in some exciting ways".

"In the coming years, AI will be able to generate creative for advertisers as well -- and will also be able to personalize it as people see it. Over the long term, advertisers will basically just be able to tell us a business objective and a budget, and we're going to go do the rest for them. We're going to get there incrementally over time, but I think this is going to be a very big deal."

The company anticipates third quarter 2024 total revenue to be in the range of US$38.5-41 billion with full-year 2024 expenses are expected to fall within the US$96-99 billion range.

Meanwhile, Meta's Reality Labs division is projected to see increased operating losses in 2024 due to ongoing product development efforts and investments.

Significant infrastructure costs are expected to drive expense growth in 2025 due to an expanded infrastructure footprint. The company's full-year 2024 capital expenditures are expected to be in the range of $37-40 billion, an increase from the prior range of $35-40 billion. This growth is expected to support artificial intelligence research and product development efforts.

The results come as Meta braces for further regulatory impacts in the EU and US market, which could "significantly impact our business and our financial results", per CFO Susan Li.