Facebook Mobile Ad: The New Golden Goose For Mark Zuckerberg And Co?
Mark Zuckerberg finally rejoined Facebook earlier this week after a two-month long paternity leave, and he could not have chosen a better time for this much-awaited comeback.
The largest social media platform announced a whopping 52 percent jump in the company's quarterly revenue on Jan. 27.
A significant proportion of this surge in revenue came from Facebook mobile ads that fared exceptionally well due to an exponential increase in the number of mobile internet users across the world.
The company reported a staggering year-on-year revenue growth to $5.84 billion while net profit increased to $1.56 billion, more than twice where the figure stood only a year ago ($701 million).
For the full year, Facebook's net revenue and net profit stood at $17.93 billion - 44 per cent increase from 2014, and $3.69 billion respectively.
The rather impressive performance by the social media site even exceeded Wall Street's Q4 expectations of $5.37 billion in revenue and $1.2 billion in profit. Buoyed by this pleasant surprise by, investors made sure that Facebook shares jump by 12 percent in after-hour trading.
By Facebook's own admission, the enormous growth in revenue and profit was a direct result of the company's aggressive push into the domain of mobile advertising.
As it turns out, Facebook mobile ads alone contributed to 80 percent of the company's total ad revenue in Q4 2015 compared with mere 23 percent during the same quarter in 2012.
"It's phenomenal at these (currency headwind) levels that they're accelerating to that level of growth," said Rob Sanderson, an analyst at MKM Partners, as reported by IOL
"I don't think there's going to be too many people crying for them to start monetizing other properties anytime soon because the core business is so strong."
Facebook said as of Dec. 31, 2015, it had 1.59 billion active monthly users in the world, which is roughly equivalent to one in every four of humanity.
