Facebook sales top estimates
The social media giant says its revenue in third quarter rose 12.5% to $4.5 billion.
The social media giant says its revenue in third quarter rose 12.5% to $4.5 billion on the strength of its mobile advertising.
In 2013, Facebook had near-zero presence in mobile advertising. Founder Mark Zuckerberg announced ambitious plans to make the company a major player in mobile.
He pulled it off. Boosted by yet another surge in mobile advertising, Facebook posted strong third-quarter earnings that beat analysts’ estimates, the Menlo Park, Calif., company said Wednesday.
The social media giant said revenue rose 12.5% from the same quarter a year earlier to $4.5 billion. Earnings per share came in at 57 cents, up 33% from a year earlier.
Facebook said advertising revenue grew 45% from a year earlier to $4.29 billion. Mobile advertising contributed about 78% of that, up from 66% in the third quarter of 2014.
Meantime, daily active users on Facebook’s mobile app climbed 27% from a year ago.
Facebook’s heavy investment in mobile includes mobile video, as advertisers slowly gravitate to that medium. About 75% of all Facebook videos are viewed on mobile devices, making the company a potent rival to Google’s YouTube. Daily video views have doubled to 8 billion since April.
Across Facebook, the number of monthly active users grew 14% year over year to 1.55 billion.
“We had a good quarter and got a lot done,” Zuckerberg, also Facebook’s chief executive, said in a statement. “We’re focused on innovating and investing for the long term to serve our community and connect the entire world.”
The company hopes to generate more advertising revenue from Instagram, the photo-sharing app it purchased in 2012 for $1 billion, which has recently expanded its marketing products.
Facebook is said to be launching a new stand-alone news app next week, according to the Financial Times. Named Notify, the app would compete with Snapchat, Twitter and Apple to deliver news natively, rather than link back to the publisher’s Website. The app is similar to an earlier news feature Facebook launched called Instant Articles, which pushed content onto user’s news feeds.
Looking forward, analysts expect continued growth for Facebook as its mobile apps — including Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger — garner more users. The company is also expected to generate new advertising opportunities as its virtual reality property, Oculus, matures.
Facebook is also competing with Google to develop a leading virtual personal assistant powered by artificial intelligence.