Meta, the company behind Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, earned $57.03 per person worldwide in advertising revenue during 2025, according to its Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2025 earnings presentation, published January 28, 2026. That is the highest per-person figure the company has ever reported, and it is the closest thing to an audited price tag on what a person's data and attention are worth to the single company that profits from them most.
No regulator or company publishes a clean "your data is worth $X" number, because no single number exists. What does exist is a set of real, dated figures from three different markets: what advertisers actually pay per person through legitimate ad platforms, what a stolen data point sells for on criminal marketplaces, and what a breach involving that data costs its victims. Below is what each market shows, with the source and date attached to every figure.
How much does Facebook and Instagram actually make from your data?
Meta's Family average revenue per person, or ARPP, is the company's own metric for total Family of Apps advertising revenue divided by average daily active people across Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and WhatsApp. For the full 2025 fiscal year, summing the four quarters Meta reported to investors gives $57.03 per person worldwide: $12.36 in Q1, $13.65 in Q2, $14.46 in Q3, and $16.56 in Q4.
The trend inside the year matters as much as the total. Q4 2025's $16.56 was up 16.2% from Q4 2024's $14.25, and every single quarter of 2025 monetized users more than the quarter before it, driven mainly by AI-improved ad targeting and growing Reels ad load rather than by adding new users.
Figure 1: Meta's worldwide Family ARPP by quarter, 2025. Source: Meta Platforms, Q4 2025 Earnings Presentation (January 28, 2026).
| Period | Worldwide ARPP |
|---|---|
| Q1 2025 | $12.36 |
| Q2 2025 | $13.65 |
| Q3 2025 | $14.46 |
| Q4 2025 | $16.56 |
| Full year 2025 (sum) | $57.03 |
A single year-over-year takeaway: Meta is extracting more revenue from the same behavioral data with each passing quarter, not because it is collecting dramatically more data, but because it has gotten better at pricing and targeting the data it already has.
Where does that per-person revenue actually come from?
Not every person is worth the same $57.03. Meta's own geographic revenue disclosure for the fourth quarter of 2025 shows advertising revenue of $25.6 billion from US and Canada, $14.2 billion from Europe, $10.9 billion from Asia-Pacific, and $7.4 billion from the rest of the world, a $58.1 billion total. US and Canada users are a small fraction of Meta's 3.58 billion worldwide daily active people, yet they generate close to half the advertising revenue, because advertisers in wealthier markets pay more per impression.
Figure 2: Meta's Q4 2025 advertising revenue by user geography. Source: Meta Platforms, Q4 2025 Earnings Presentation (January 28, 2026).
That regional gap is the practical answer to "how much is my data worth": it depends entirely on where you live and how much local advertisers are willing to spend to reach you, not on how much personal information you have shared.
What is your specific data worth if it is stolen instead of sold?
The legitimate advertising market is not the only place personal data changes hands. Privacy Affairs, a cybersecurity research firm, has periodically scanned dark web marketplaces and forums to compile a Dark Web Price Index; its last full edition was published April 23, 2023, and no comprehensive update has followed since. Treat these prices as a 2023 snapshot of the black market, not a live feed, since criminal marketplace prices move with supply.
At that snapshot, a hacked credit card with a balance up to $5,000 sold for around $110, a hacked Gmail account for $60, a passport scan for $50, and a hacked Facebook or Instagram login for $25. Verified, high-balance banking logins were the outlier at the top of the index, selling for $2,200 to $4,255 depending on the account, well above every other single item category Privacy Affairs tracked.
Figure 3: Starting dark web prices for common stolen data types. Source: Privacy Affairs, Dark Web Price Index (April 23, 2023, last full edition).
| Data or account type | Dark web price (Apr. 2023) |
|---|---|
| Verified bank login | $2,200 to $4,255 |
| Credit card, up to $5,000 balance | $110 |
| Hacked Gmail account | $60 |
| Passport scan | $50 |
| Hacked Facebook or Instagram login | $25 |
| Hacked Twitter login | $20 |
The gap between $57.03 in legitimate annual ad revenue and $2,200-plus for a single stolen bank login shows why criminals target financial credentials specifically rather than general browsing profiles: aggregated behavioral data is worth pennies per person to an advertiser, but a single verified financial account is worth thousands to a thief.
How does a data point actually turn into a dollar?
The path from "you used an app" to "a company recorded revenue" runs through several steps, and understanding it explains why the same data is worth wildly different amounts in different markets.
Figure 4: The same underlying data point can be monetized three different ways, each with its own pricing logic. Source: PrivacyTerms.io analysis of Meta and Privacy Affairs disclosures.
Data brokers sit in the middle of that flow, and the industry they run is large enough that Congress has started investigating it directly. A Joint Economic Committee report published February 27, 2026 found that just four data broker breaches, Equifax, Exactis, National Public Data, and TransUnion, cost US consumers more than $20.8 billion in identity theft losses since 2017. Our companion post breaks down how many data brokers actually exist and how state registries try to track them, and a separate deep dive covers the data broker industry's size and reach in full, including registration numbers by state. A third angle worth tracking, data broker fines and enforcement case history specifically, does not yet have a dedicated writeup on this site; we will link it here once it does.
If your business collects any of the data types in the tables above, whether through analytics, ad pixels, or account signups, the practical step is making sure your privacy policy actually discloses what you collect and who you share it with. You can generate a privacy policy that names your specific data practices rather than relying on generic boilerplate that would not hold up if a regulator or a user asked exactly what happens to their data after they hand it over.
How has the personal data economy gotten here?
The market for personal data did not appear overnight. Key milestones show both regulators and platforms treating personal data as a priced asset for over a decade.
Figure 5: A decade of regulatory and market milestones in the personal data economy. Sources: FTC, GDPR, CCPA, Privacy Affairs, Meta Platforms, US Joint Economic Committee.
Two things have not changed since 2014: no US federal law caps what a company can charge an advertiser for showing you a targeted ad, and no US federal law requires a data broker to disclose its per-record price to the public. Everything in the tables above exists because a researcher, a company's own investor disclosure, or a congressional investigation happened to make a number public.
The Bottom Line
There is no single honest answer to "how much is my data worth," because the honest answer depends on which market is buying. To Meta's advertisers, a person is worth $57.03 a year on average, and far more if they live in the US or Canada. To a data thief, a single stolen bank login is worth $2,200 or more, a hundred-fold jump over what an advertiser pays for an entire year of behavioral targeting, because financial credentials convert directly to cash while ad data only monetizes in aggregate. The throughline across every figure in this post is that your data's value is not fixed: it depends on who is buying, what specific data point they want, and whether they are paying for attention or for direct access to your accounts. The one thing you control directly is what you disclose and share in the first place, which is exactly what a specific, accurate privacy policy is supposed to document.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Meta's average revenue per person, and why does it matter? Meta's worldwide Family average revenue per person (ARPP) was $57.03 for full-year 2025, calculated from its own quarterly earnings disclosures and published in its Q4 2025 earnings presentation on January 28, 2026. It matters because it is the closest thing to an audited price tag on what a person's attention and data are worth to the single company that profits from them most, since Meta reports this figure to the SEC every quarter.
What is the most valuable stolen personal data on the dark web? Verified banking logins, which sold for $2,200 to $4,255 depending on the account balance, according to Privacy Affairs' Dark Web Price Index, the last full edition of which was published in April 2023. Forged EU passports followed at $2,500 to $4,000, well above a hacked credit card with a balance up to $5,000, which sold for $110.
Why is a US or Canadian user's data worth more to advertisers than the global average? Because advertisers bid more per ad impression in wealthier markets with higher consumer spending power. US and Canada alone generated $25.6 billion of Meta's $58.1 billion in worldwide Q4 2025 advertising revenue, despite Family Daily Active People worldwide averaging 3.58 billion, the large majority of whom are outside North America.
How does a company actually turn your data into revenue? By collecting behavioral and profile data, using it to select and target an ad, then counting the resulting ad revenue against the audience size to produce a per-person figure. Meta's own ARPP calculation is exactly that: total Family of Apps advertising revenue for a period, divided by average daily active people, which is how the 3.58 billion daily active people figure and the $57.03 annual figure connect.
Where the Numbers Come From
- Meta Platforms, Inc.. (2026). "Meta Reports Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2025 Results." Published January 28, 2026. Family DAP of 3.58 billion for December 2025, full-year revenue of $200.97 billion.
- Meta Platforms, Inc.. (2026). "Q4 2025 Earnings Presentation." Worldwide Family ARPP by quarter ($12.36, $13.65, $14.46, $16.56 for Q1 to Q4 2025; $14.25 for Q4 2024) and advertising revenue by user geography ($25,643M US and Canada, $14,198M Europe, $10,893M Asia-Pacific, $7,403M Rest of World for Q4 2025).
- Privacy Affairs. (2023). "Dark Web Price Index 2023." Published April 23, 2023, the last full edition of this index. Prices for credit cards, banking logins, social media accounts, and identity documents based on scans of dark web marketplaces and forums.
- United States Joint Economic Committee. (2026). "New Report: Senator Hassan Finds That Data Broker Breaches Cost U.S. Consumers More Than $20 Billion." Published February 27, 2026, based on four breaches totaling 651 million exposed records since 2017.
Note: All figures verified as of September 2026. The Meta ARPP and revenue-by-region figures are Meta's own quarterly disclosures and update every earnings cycle; the Privacy Affairs dark web figures reflect the last full index published in April 2023 and may not capture current criminal marketplace pricing. This post will be refreshed at least twice a year to track new Meta earnings releases.
