Brief:
- Highlights from Facebook’s Q3 earnings report include a 56% increase in revenue year-over-year to $7 billion and an average of 1.18 billion daily active users, including 1.09 billion daily active users on mobile alone.
- Mobile advertising revenue continued to grow for the social media company, accounting for 84% of Facebook’s ad revenue, which is up from 78% in the same period last year.
- Facebook now has a grand total of 1.79 billion monthly active users, an increase of nearly 5% over last quarter and 17% from last year — building on its reach, already the biggest of any social media platform.
Insight:
Despite recent controversies over the inefficiencies of targeted ads and the inflation of its video viewership metrics, Facebook continues to build its presence, with mobile in particular growing fast and reaching record numbers. Many marketers have struggled to keep up with mobile's rapid rise and proliferation, and Facebook is looking to help brands better adjust to the disruption heading forward.
“[P]eople have shifted to mobile, and we remain focused on helping businesses catch up. We know that marketing shifts take time," said Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg on the earnings call. "The first TV ads showed people standing in front of microphones reading their radio ads. Similarly, many of the first mobile video ads were TV ads dropped into mobile. Ads optimized for each platform often perform better, so marketers are increasingly tailoring their creative for mobile.”
Sandberg also pointed out how big brands, such as P&G and GM, are finding success with Facebook's mobile video ads. In the past month alone, more than three million small businesses have published content on Facebook that combines organic posts with video, she added.
Another area where Facebook is finding success is through its two messaging apps — Messenger and WhatsApp, which have strived to become more marketer-friendly this year. Messenger made a big splash when it introduced branded chatbots on the platform, while WhatsApp enabled the sharing of user data with its parent company to help target ads.
Facebook’s strong earnings comes in stark contrast with one-time competitor Twitter, which laid off 9% of its workforce around its Q3 earnings release last week after its deadline for acquisition bids passed without real interest.