Facebook is dealing with uncertainty about the future of its advertising business, hence it plans to start publishing the financial results of its augmented and virtual reality labs, the company said Monday.

This should occur as a separate unit, where it is investing huge sums of money for its ambitious initiatives to build the "metaverse".

Zuckerberg's company reported quarterly revenue below market expectations (17% the third quarter), largely due to changes to Apple's privacy policies in iOS.

Facebook said it expects fourth quarter revenues to be between $31.5 billion and $34 billion. Analysts had forecast $34.84 billion in revenue, or an increase of 24.11TP2Q, according to IBES data from Refinitiv.

Facebook expected its investment in its hardware division, Facebook Reality Lab - which will work on the ambitions of the "metaverse" - to reduce overall operating profit this year by about $10 billion.

"This is not an investment that is going to be profitable for us in the near future," said Mark Zuckerberg. "But we believe that the metaverse is going to be the successor to the mobile Internet."

Recall that earlier this month the company said it plans to hire ten thousand new employees in Europe over the next five years to work on this initiative.