What Happened
Facebook reported its quarterly earnings yesterday and, all things considered, the social network is doing splendidly well, especially in regard to its mobile ad revenues. The company reported a 45% year over year increase in ad sales in the Q3 2015, bringing total ad sales to $4.3 billion, of which mobile ads took up about 78% ($3.4 billion). Moreover, Facebook also reported 8 billion average daily video views from 500 million users, up from just 4 billion video views per day in April.
Market Impact
With mobile ads now accounting for the majority of its ad revenues, Facebook’s transformation into a mobile company is now more than half complete. The majority of users are accessing the social network via mobile devices, and its monetization focus has also shifted toward mobile. Although part of that 8 billion views is no doubt fueled by the autoplay videos on user timelines, the impressive number still indicates early success in Facebook’s ongoing efforts to build out its video platform, which bodes well for Facebook as it competes with YouTube for the TV commercial dollars that are shifting to digital video.
Source: AdWeek and TechCrunch; Chart from Statista