Based on Meta Platforms (NASDAQ: META) nearly 80% run higher so far this year, you could be forgiven for thinking this is the stock price of a company with soaring revenue. But this is far from reality. In fact, the current consensus analyst estimate calls for Meta's first-quarter revenue to fall 1% year over year. Even more, this would mark the company's fourth quarter in a row of declining revenue on a year-over-year basis.

Why isn't Meta's top-line revenue growth ready to kick into high gear yet? It boils down to the challenges the company is facing in its advertising segment, which accounts for nearly all of the Facebook parent's revenue. That said, investors shouldn't expect strong growth from Meta's reality labs business either.

While a weak economy is certainly weighing on Meta, the first major challenge that started taking a toll on Meta's top line was a technological issue. In 2021, (NASDAQ: AAPL) started rolling out a privacy feature on iOS that made it difficult for third-party apps like Meta's Facebook and Instagram to target users with ads and measure ad performance on the iPhone maker's platform. By the fourth quarter of 2021, Meta could tell this was going to weigh on the company's results, so management guided for a dramatic slowdown in top-line growth in the first quarter of 2022. 

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Source Fool.com