Facebook Sales Hit £4bn As Mobile Advertising Pays Off

Facebook has reported more than $1 billion (£700m) in quarterly profit for the first time ever, as its fourth-quarter earnings and revenue smash previous estimates thanks to strong mobile advertising performance.

Sales rose 57 percent from a year earlier to $5.6 billion (£3.9bn) – the fastest growth rate Facebook has experienced since the third quarter of 2014.

“2015 was a great year for Facebook. Our community continued to grow and our business is thriving,” said Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook CEO. “We continue to invest in better serving our community, building our business, and connecting the world.”

Mobile

Mobile advertising accounted for 80 percent of its total advertising revenue in the quarter, up from 69 percent the previous year, proving the social media giant has a firm grip on the shifting methods its user base visits the website.

Revenue for the full year 2015 was $17.93 billion (£13bn) , an increase of 44 percent year-over-year. Net income for the full year 2015 was $3.69 billion (£2.6bn). Facebook reported 934 million daily active mobile users on average for December 2015, an increase of 25 percent year-over-year.

“Tonight’s results prove that Facebook, despite a slowing in the acceleration of its growth, continues to make use of its engaged user base of over 1 billion every month on mobile,” said Stephanie Carr, vice president of online advertising company Marin Software.

“The acquisition of Oculus last year and just, this week, the controversial but hugely valuable changes being made to Facebook-owned WhatsApp are both evidence of the company’s ambitions to reach its users in increasingly diverse ways,” she said.

Earlier this week, Facebook confirmed it is to start building a new data centre in County Meath, Ireland, that will be powered entirely by renewable energy.

The data centre, which will be located in the village of Clonee, should be operational by the end of 2018, according to a blog post written by Facebook’s vice president of infrastructure Tom Furlong.

The data centre will be Facebook’s second in Europe, with the other one located in Luleå, Sweden. Ireland has been home to Facebook’s European headquarters since 2009, and the social media giant said that the new data centre will continue its investment into the country and Europe.

Take our London and Technology quiz here!