MENLO PARK >> Facebook continued to rake in more mobile ad dollars in the third quarter, reporting earnings and sales Wednesday that beat Wall Street’s expectations.
About 78 percent of advertising revenue from July to September came from mobile ads, up from the same period last year. In 2014, mobile ads made up about 66 percent of third-quarter ad dollars.
Not only have a growing number of people been browsing Facebook on their phones, but the format of its mobile ads led many marketers to use the site early on to showcase their products, analysts say.
“When Facebook began selling mobile ads a few years ago, it made it very easy for marketers to place the ads. They didn’t have to think about reformatting their ads, redesigning them or coming up with different messaging,” said Debra Aho Williamson, an analyst with eMarketer. “This was a huge innovation that led many advertisers to adopt Facebook mobile advertising more quickly.”
As Facebook tries to get more people in developing countries to use the site and offers free basic Internet services abroad, the social network has grown to about 1.55 billion monthly active users. About a billion people on average log into Facebook daily.
The company has also been trying to improve the mobile experience for its users, releasing a new version of the Facebook app this year that works with slower Internet connections, profile videos and other features.
“This is a great sign for how our mobile strategy continues to make progress across markets, devices and platforms,” Facebook CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg said in a call to investors.
The Menlo Park company reported $4.5 billion in third-quarter sales, up 41 percent, and surpassing the $4.37 billion in revenue that analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters expected the company to report.
Facebook earned 31 cents a share, beating the 27 cents a share expected in the third quarter.
Excluding certain expenses, Facebook reported earnings of 57 cents compared with the 52 cents analysts expected. Its stock was up more than 3 percent in after-hours trading.
Analysts were expecting Facebook to report strong results in the third quarter, especially since it started ramping up advertising on the photo-sharing site Instagram and in video. There are about 8 billion video views on Facebook daily, up from the 4 billion daily video views the company reported in April.
But analysts have also been keeping an eye on the tech firm’s rising expenses especially since Oculus, which Facebook owns, is scheduled to release its virtual reality headset early next year.
“Virtual reality has the potential to be the next computing platform that changes all of our lives,” Zuckerberg said. “It’s important also to recognize that this is also going to grow slowly like computers and mobile phones when they first arrived.”
