Advertising for Meta Quest virtual reality headsets on a digital billboard in London (Mike Kemp/Getty Images)

Meta, Amazon, and lots of tech firms will be indirectly harmed by tariffs, too

There aren’t tariffs on digital goods yet, but advertising — and by extension tech companies — will certainly feel the pain.

Rani Molla

4/4/25 1:51PM

Tariffs are terrible for companies that sell physical products. They’re also bad news for the companies that make money advertising those products — even if digital services aren’t subject to tariffs.

That’s because when there’s economic turmoil, advertising budgets are the first to go.

That pain could be most strongly felt by American tech companies like Google, Meta, and Amazon, which eMarketer previously forecast would bring in a combined $462 billion in digital ad revenue. Relatively smaller ad-supported businesses like Reddit and Snap are also seeing steep losses. (That’s not to mention how their tech hardware businesses will be adversely affected.)

What’s more, for many tech businesses, Chinese companies are responsible for a lot of the advertising, and that floor will likely cave under 54% tariffs. Tariffs that affect Chinese sales will hit advertising, too. Madison and Wall analyst Brian Wieser estimated that about $10 billion of Meta’s revenue for ads shown in the US come from outside the US, mainly China.

For Amazon, not only do many of the goods sold on its site originate in China, but those sellers spend a pretty penny advertising those goods on Amazon, as well.

“Amazon likely generates a bigger percentage of revenue from Chinese advertisers trying to reach American audiences: Marketplace Pulse estimates that Chinese manufacturers represent 50% of Amazon’s top sellers on its marketplace site in the US, and the marketplace is likely the primary driver of advertising activity for Amazon,” Wieser wrote. “The new policies could almost be described as a tax on advertising.”

Both Madison and Wall and MAGNA, an ad measurement firm, recently lowered their expectations for US ad spending this year.

Meta is trading down over 4% today, Reddit is down 11%, and Google and Amazon are down more than 2%.

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Rani Molla2/27/26

Meta reportedly strikes multibillion-dollar AI chip deal with Google as it struggles to design its own

Meta has signed a deal with Google to rent tensor processing units to develop new AI models and is in talks to buy the chips for its data centers, The Information reports.

The agreement comes on top of a recently announced “multi-generational” partnership with Nvidia and a chip supply deal with Advanced Micro Devices that could be worth more than $100 billion, as Meta scrapped its most advanced in-house AI training chip amid design challenges.

A Meta deal with Google, which has been rumored since November, would position the search giant more directly as a competitor to Nvidia in its core business of AI processors. Some analysts have said selling its custom chips to outside customers could become a business worth hundreds of billions of dollars for Google.

Google Strikes Multibillion-Dollar AI Chip Deal With Meta, Sharpening Nvidia Rivalry

Jon Keegan2/26/26

Delays in permitting, power, and zoning cause first drop in data center construction since 2020

Despite incredible demand, the number of data centers under construction in North America fell for the first time since 2020, according to new research from CBRE.

Total data center capacity under construction dropped about 5.6% year on year from 6.35 megawatts in 2024 to 5.99 megawatts by the end of 2025.

What’s causing the delay? Slow permitting, constrained supply chains, and growing public engagement with how deals are approved at the local level. Labor constraints also were cited in the report; a tight supply of skilled workers will increase costs.

US Data Center Construction Fell Amid Permit and Power Delays

-13%📱

Rani Molla2/26/26

Smartphone shipments are expected to decline 13% — the biggest drop ever — to 1.12 billion in 2026, according to new data from IDC, as the memory shortage drives up costs and prices for phones. The firm expects the average smartphone selling price to jump 14% to a record $523 this year.

The shortfall will mostly affect makers of lower-end smartphones, whose customers are more cost-conscious, while higher-end manufacturers like Samsung and Apple are likely to be more insulated from the pressure.

“The memory crisis will cause more than a temporary decline; it marks a structural reset of the entire market, fundamentally reshaping long‑term TAM (Total Addressable Market), the vendor landscape, and the product mix,” said Nabila Popal, senior research director with IDC’s Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker. “We expect consolidation as smaller players exit, and low-end vendors to face sharp shipment declines amid supply constraints and lower demand at higher price points.”

Jon Keegan2/26/26

Google drops new Nano Banana

Google is hoping to recapture the viral boost it received when it released its Nano Banana image generation model. Nano Banana 2 arrives today, which Google has rolled into its Gemini app.

The new model promises more accurate text rendering and translation and “advanced world knowledge,” which “pulls from Gemini’s real-world knowledge base, and is powered by real-time information and images from web search to more accurately render specific subjects,” according to the company’s press release.

New creative controls let users keep groups of characters consistent across scenes, render images with higher resolution, and parse complex prompts.

The first version of Nano Banana became popular for making action figures out of users, and helped catapult the Gemini AI app to the top of the charts, bumping ChatGPT from its perch.

Nano Banana 2: Combining Pro capabilities with lightning-fast speed

New creative controls let users keep groups of characters consistent across scenes, render images with higher resolution, and parse complex prompts.

The first version of Nano Banana became popular for making action figures out of users, and helped catapult the Gemini AI app to the top of the charts, bumping ChatGPT from its perch.

Rani Molla2/26/26

Tesla’s ride-hailing service is looking a lot more like Uber’s than Waymo’s

Despite numerous promises about amassing a giant network of driverless cars, so far it seems like Tesla’s Robotaxis are a lot more similar to Uber’s plain old ride-hailing service than Waymo’s expanding autonomous fleet.

In California, where Tesla has its largest ride-hailing service, the company has taken no formal steps to gain approval for a truly driverless car service, according to Reuters. Throughout 2025, Tesla failed to log a single mile of autonomous test driving on state roads, and has not applied for the necessary permits to test or deploy vehicles without a human present. Currently, Tesla holds only a basic permit that requires a human safety monitor to remain in the driver’s seat at all times.

Currently, Tesla’s California Robotaxi service consists of roughly 300 Teslas operated by human drivers using the company’s supervised Full Self-Driving tech. In Austin, where the company has about 45 vehicles, Tesla made a big show earlier this year of announcing it was removing the safety monitors sitting in the front seats during rides. However, to date, only a handful of those vehicles have been reported to be actually operating without a safety monitor onboard.

In other words, it’s performing a service more akin to a tech-heavy Uber ride than the one operated by Alphabet subsidiary Waymo, which earlier this week announced it now has driverless rides available to the public in 10 markets. Even Uber is trying to put space between itself and the old driver-having Ubers of yore: this week its autonomous software partner said the company plans to launch a driverless service in London this year, with plans for 10 markets.

During its earnings report last month, Tesla said it planned to offer Robotaxi service in a half dozen new cities in the first half of this year, including Phoenix, Miami, and Las Vegas. Judging by Tesla’s progress so far, it’s likely those services will also feature a human in the front seat.

Tesla touts California robotaxis but does nothing to get permits

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