The gargantuan Facebook 'army'

Mobile advertising drove Facebook's impressive growth in Q2 as the company continued to increase monthly active user numbers north of the one billion mark. For Q3 2013, the social network beat analysts' expectations once more with $2.02 billion in revenue for the period. Daily active users for the month of September averaged 728 million (a 25 percent increase year-over-year) and monthly active users rose to 1.19 billion. Mobile check-ins grew once more as well, seeing 874 million monthly (a 45 percent year-over-year increase) and 507 million daily users compared to 819 million and 469 million for those sectors during Q2. These numbers show that the gap between mobile and total active users continues to draw closer with each passing three-month period as Facebook continues the mobile push and social media increasingly becomes a chore for handsets and tablets on-the-go.

Those ads on users' daily drivers accounted for 49 percent of all ad revenue in Q3 2013 -- up from 41 percent last quarter. If the current pattern holds, the fourth quarter report could show that over half of the outfit's revenue is coming from mobile advertising -- especially with Instagram ads on the way shortly for its 150 million monthly active users. Revenue from ads on the whole is up 66 percent from Q3 2012 totaling $1.8 billion. Of course, the so-called "native" ads that appear as regular posts in the News Feed have become part of the strategy for working in sponsored content over right-hand column ads. "The strong results we achieved this quarter show that we're prepared for the next phase of our company, as we work to bring the next five billion people online and into the knowledge economy," said founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg. When compared to the same quarter last year, net income is also up as it rang in at $425 million in comparison to the net loss of $59 million the outfit saw during Q3 2012. The quarterly earnings call will take place shortly, but we'll be sure to update this post if any newsy bits are mentioned there.

Update: On the call, Zuckerberg mentioned that 48 percent of daily Facebook users log-in on mobile which lends a big hand to those mobile ad numbers. He also mentioned continued dedication to improving ads (things like honing in targeted ads and those with video) as the company focuses on "making money to make better services." COO Sheryl Sandberg mentioned that Facebook and Instagram users spend more of their time on those two social networks on mobile (one in every five minutes) than other popular streams like YouTube, Tumblr, Pandora and others combined in the US.


/AzerTAg/