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Inside Facebook

Inside Facebook

Facebook addresses mobile monetization concerns with stats and reminders about newly launched products

Posted: 23 Oct 2012 04:16 PM PDT

Facebook announced today that 14 percent of its total advertising revenue in Q3 came from mobile ads — less than 8 months since the company began its monetization efforts in the space.

According to earnings reports, Facebook generated $1.086 billion in advertising revenue in Q3, suggesting that about $152 million came from mobile. It's worth noting that Q3 was the first full quarter that advertisers had the option to specifically purchase mobile inventory. Sponsored Stories began appearing in mobile feed in March, but advertisers couldn't control their placements until June. CFO David Ebersman said on today's earnings call that ads in News Feed are now generating about $4 million per day, with three-fourths of that from the mobile feed.

Mobile growth and opportunity was clearly the theme of the investor call today. CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that mobile is the "most misunderstood" aspect of Facebook's business, iterating a point he made last month about mobile being "fundamentally good" for the social network. Zuckerberg noted that mobile users are more engaged on a daily basis than non-mobile users, and that its mobile ad products are and will continue to be more deeply integrated into the experience rather than off to the side as they are on desktop. He said that although it might have seemed that Facebook couldn't monetize mobile earlier this year, that was because the company simply hadn't tried yet.

In the past eight months, though, Facebook has introduced several opportunities for mobile revenue. On the ad side, there’s Sponsored Stories, page post ads, Promoted Posts and app install ads. These are all directly within the feed, and advertisers across the board are seeing higher clickthroughs and engagement with these units. COO Sheryl Sandberg noted that page post ads in News Feed (including desktop and mobile) are eight times more engaging than the same ads in the right hand column, and they have a 10 times greater ad recall per impression. This is in line with what we have heard from a number of Preferred Marketing Developers testing these ads.

App install ads benefit from being a "uniquely mobile" product, Sandberg says, though those ads are in very early stages. The product came out of beta last week. Another mobile-first advertising venture is the mobile ad network still being tested with select partners. These aren't having an effect on Facebook's earnings yet, but lay the groundwork in areas with a lot of potential for growth. Sandberg says that within eight months, Facebook has become one of the largest mobile ad platforms in the world.

Offers are another product with an opportunity to drive revenue on mobile. Since launch, about 100,000 pages have created an Offer and about 30 percent of Offer claims are coming from mobile devices, Sandberg says.

Separate from Facebook's ad business, the company also announced Facebook Gifts just before the end of Q3. The product, which allows users to buy actual goods for their friends, was spun out of the social network's acquisition of Karma and has a significant mobile component. It is still being rolled out in the U.S.

And although Facebook hasn’t made any moves to monetize Instagram, Zuckerberg said that the mobile photo-sharing app has gone from 27 million registered users since before the acquisition to more than 100 million today. There is more mobile time being spent on Instagram than on Twitter, he pointed out.

Facebook’s global growth in Q3: 1.01B MAU, 604M people connect through mobile

Posted: 23 Oct 2012 03:26 PM PDT

Facebook today shared new stats on its user growth across the globe, including that it reached 1.01 billion monthly active users on Sept. 14. This is a 26 percent increase year-over-year. The social network also reports that 604 million people now access Facebook through mobile devices monthly.

The graph below shows how Facebook has grown across different geographies since its last earnings call in July. The social network has grown steadily across the board, even showing a 22 million user increase in Asia, especially as it continues to gain traction in Japan.

For daily active users, Facebook has grown steadily as well, going up 32 million users worldwide since the last earnings call. This is a 28 percent increase year-over-year.

However, the most impressive numbers come from Facebook’s mobile efforts as monthly active users on mobile has grown to 604 million, an increase of 61 percent year-over-year. In response to questions about the potential for Facebook’s mobile properties to be a strong source of revenue, the company shared that 14 percent of its ad revenue was generated from mobile.

In a press release, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said, “I'm also really happy that over 600 million people now share and connect on Facebook every month using mobile devices. People who use our mobile products are more engaged, and we believe we can increase engagement even further as we continue to introduce new products and improve our platform. At the same time, we are deeply integrating monetization into our product teams in order to build a stronger, more valuable company.”

Facebook reports $1.262B in revenue for Q3 2012, net loss of $59M

Posted: 23 Oct 2012 02:24 PM PDT

Facebook today reported $1.262 billion in revenue for the third quarter ended Sept. 30, 2012 — a 32 percent increase from the $954 million reported in Q3 2011.

Revenue from advertising was $1.09 billion, representing 86 percent of total revenue and a 36 percent increase from the same quarter last year. Payments and other fees revenue for the third quarter was $176 million, a 13 percent increase over Q3 2011 and a 9 percent decline sequentially from the second quarter of 2012.

Monthly active users (MAUs) were 1.01 billion as of Sept. 30, 2012, an increase of 26 percent year-over-year. Daily active users (DAUs) were 584 million on average for September 2012, an increase of 28 percent year-over-year. Mobile MAUs were 604 million as of Sept. 30, 2012, an increase of 61 percent year-over-year.

Facebook is leaning hard on its early progress in mobile growth and monetization. “I’m [...] really happy that over 600 million people now share and connect on Facebook every month using mobile devices,” Zuckerberg said in the earnings press release. “People who use our mobile products are more engaged, and we believe we can increase engagement even further as we continue to introduce new products and improve our platform. At the same time, we are deeply integrating monetization into our product teams in order to build a stronger, more valuable company.”

Zuckerberg: The games ecosystem is growing

Posted: 23 Oct 2012 02:21 PM PDT

Mark Zuckerberg admitted that the Facebook’s games ecosystem “is not doing as well as I’d like” today on Facebook’s Q3 earnings call, though he said it is growing overall.

Payments revenue from social game giant Zynga dropped 20 percent for Facebook compared to Q3 2011. In total, Zynga made up 43 percent of Facebook’s Payments revenue this quarter and just 7 percent of Facebook’s total revenue (including Zynga’s ad spend). This is down significantly from previous quarters where Zynga has made up as much as 63 percent of Payments revenue (last year) and 12 percent of total revenues (at the point of Facebook’s IPO).

Even so, Zuckerberg says the games ecosystem as a whole is growing with revenues from other game developers increasing 40 percent over the last year since Payments was made mandatory for game developers. Payments (and other fees) revenue for Q3 was up year on year almost 13 percent from $156 million to $176 million.

Zynga’s Q3 earnings call is scheduled for Wednesday. Reports today indicate a large number of its employees were laid off earlier this morning and its Boston studio was closed.

Facebook code hints at ads possibly coming to messages product

Posted: 23 Oct 2012 11:17 AM PDT

New wording in the code for Facebook Messages suggests the social network could introduce a type of promoted product within a user's inbox.

Developer Tom Waddington, who was first to spot code for a Want button, pointed us to three sections in the Facebook Messages code that now mention the possibility of promotions. "Paid promotion" is now a possible source for a message, along with iPhone, Android, mobile web and other sources from which users can send each other messages. "Promotion:promoted" is now a possible message tag, along with tags like sent, archived or spam. Finally, "is_promoted" is another bit of code now returned in the data about messages.

It's unclear exactly what is in the works here, but it seems as though Facebook will allow users or marketers to pay to send or promote a direct message to users. The social network has a Promoted Posts feature for both pages and individual users. Pages can pay to show a post to more fans and their friends. Users can pay to push their posts to the top of friends' feeds. A promoted messages product might be a new way for pages to reach fans, or it could be an opportunity for marketers using Custom Audiences targeting to contact their customers and email subscribers via Facebook direct messages. Facebook did not comment on Waddington's discovery or the possibility of promoted messages.

Facebook previously allowed companies to reach their fans through the inbox with the "send an update" feature for pages. These could be targeted by location, age and gender, and pages typically used them to let fans know about upcoming promotions and events. When Facebook overhauled its Messages product in 2010, most of these page updates started getting routed to users' Other folder, which didn't generate notifications and was hidden in a sub-navigation menu. The open rate on these fell, and ultimately, Facebook removed the "send an update" feature in September 2011.

If Facebook gives marketers access to the inbox again, it will have to carefully lay out policies and best practices to prevent businesses from abusing the channel and turning off users. One of the key advantages Facebook Messages have over email is relevance. Messages are primarily from friends, whereas email has become overrun with newsletters, spam and other junk mail. Facebook will need to ensure that any paid promotions are relevant and valuable to users. If such a product is in development, the company will likely test it with a small number of partners and roll it out gradually to gauge user feedback.

onsdag den 24. oktober 2012 at 07.25