July 27, 2017

Facebook boosts quarterly advertising revenue to $9.2bn with mobile making up majority

Facebook increased its quarterly advertising revenue by 47 per cent year-on-year to $9.2bn, new financial results show.

Advertising made up 98 per cent of the social network’s total revenues for the three months to the end of June, which reached $9.3bn.

Mobile advertising represented 87 per cent of total advertising revenue, up 3 per cent on the same period last year.

Facebook’s net income rose by 71 per cent year-on-year to $3.9bn.

Founder and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said: “We had a good second quarter and first half of the year. Our community is now two billion people and we’re focusing on bringing the world closer together.”

The social media platform’s number of daily active users rose by 17 per cent year-on-year to 1.3bn on average for June.

Facebook also owns communication service giants WhatsApp and Instagram. Its full second quarter financial results have been published online.

Facebook’s continued growth is in contrast to the industry-wide decline experienced by news media publishers in the UK, who are struggling against falling advertising revenues and sales.

The social network, along with fellow web giant Google, took nearly all the new money from the UK’s digital advertising market last year.

The pair – known as the Duopoly – are predicted to take 71 per cent of all the money spent in the UK on digital advertising by 2020, according to a report by analysts OC&C.

Press Gazette has launched a campaign calling on Facebook and Google to stop destroying journalism and pay news publishers a fairer deal for using their content.