Facebook Q4 Growth At 51%, Mobile Ads Drive Strong Performance

Mark Zuckerberg’s social media giant recently posted a strong quarterly revenue report, with growth amounting to 51% compared to the year before. As a result, Facebook’s shares jumped by 2 percent by the time the markets closed on Wednesday. It would also seem that the main driver of the phenomenal performance was ad revenue from mobile sources, which means Facebook really needs to get on that Messenger ad platform fast.

Analysts were expecting an $8.51 billion revenue by Facebook during Q4, but the social media site beat that by earning $8.81 billion instead, Forbes reports. Much of the earnings were brought in via mobile ad revenue through the Facebook app and even via Instagram. In fact, this quarter’s earnings owe about 84 percent to mobile ads, which makes it clear that the company needs to double down on smart devices.

For this whole year, analysts are already forecasting that Facebook will be making around $33.76 billion in ad revenue. That’s about $18.25 ad revenue generated per user. If so, this would officially make the social media giant the second-largest earner in terms of ads, with Google being number one.

With regards to profit, Facebook’s report puts it at about $3.57 billion, which is about $1.21 increase per share. That’s a 128 percent jump when compared to profit performance in the same period last year. The company added that if it wasn’t for expenses, profits would have been $4.15 billion.

On that note, it would seem that by the social network’s own plans, ad revenues are likely to go down in 2017. Facebook has already announced that it will be reducing the number of ads that it will be showing to users, USA Today reports, and there will also be additional spending for the year. These expenses will go to creating data centers and hiring engineers.