Facebook has beaten expectations for its first quarter pushed by its robust mobile advertising business and a growing number of users. “We had a great start to the year”, said co-founder and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg.
Advertisement
“We’re focused on our 10-year roadmap to give everyone in the world the power to share anything they want with anyone”, he added. The 12-year old company also recorded earnings of $1.51 billion, which doubles the $512 million recorded at this time last year. Its revenue for the first quarter increased to $5.3 billion, up 52 percent from previous year figures. Daily active users (DAUs) reached a staggering 1.1 billion in March 2016, a 16% increase year-over-year, while monthly active users (MAUs) climbed to 1,65 billion at the end of the quarter.
Shares of Facebook stock, which have risen 33 percent during the past year, spiked up 9.5 percent to $119.28 in after-hours trading on April 27.
This indicates that despite being ahead of its contemporaries in monetising the developing world market, Facebook may still be lagging behind in effective monetization compared to the rate of user growth in these countries.
At the recently-concluded F8 conference in California, Zuckerburg had said that Facebook will focus on connectivity, artificial intelligence and augmented reality over the next 10 years. The proposal still needs to be approved at the annual stockholders meeting scheduled on June 20.
The company’s successful quarter seems to have been on the back of its ever-expanding user base. Mobile advertising sales accounted for 82% of advertising revenue, up from 73% a year ago.
In the UK, Facebook will capture £1.43bn in display ad revenue in 2016, or a 32.1% share of display ad spending in the country, representing a 26.1% increase on past year.
“If this proposal goes into effect, we’ll get to keep improving your Facebook experience the way we do today”.
Facebook has been able to grow at rapid rate and the company has not even tried to generate sales from newer chat applications like WhatsApp, which has 1 billion users, and Messenger, which has 900 million.
Advertisement
The social network has come to dominate the mobile ads space as other media companies and advertising platforms still grapple with how to serve effective ads on small screens.
