Facebook’s newly released figures for Q4 2017 show that revenue came in well above analyst expectations at $12.97 billion. The consensus projection has been that sales revenue would come in at $12.6 billion.
Mobile ad revenue accounted for approximately 89% of the social networking giant’s complete ad revenue.
The number of monthly active users climbed 14 percent to 2.13 billion, which was a marginally lower rate of expansion than the previous quarter. The business cemented itself after Google as the world’s next largest ad seller.
The characters were, but not all favorable. The period spent by consumers on the site has fallen by about 5%, or 50 million hours a day. Mark Zuckerberg noted that changes to the information feed, such as reducing the volume of movies, were a major factor in the fall.
News feed changes
At a conference call to investors, Zuckerberg was keen to emphasise that time was by itself a tool to judge this network’s value. In addition, he said that he anticipates term drops due to changes in the news feed will make the product more powerful overall.
Forbes quotations Zuckerberg as stating:
“By focusing on purposeful interactions, I believe that the time spent on Facebook will be precious. If individuals interact more, it must lead to more powerful community.When you take care of something, you’re willing to see ads to experience it”
The figures may a concern, however, as they come before the execution of the year-long major changes which will look to make interactions between users a priority. There are concerns of the impact these changes will have on the ability to deliver ad opportunities for manufacturers of the company.
“Changes to the algorithm shouldn’t make brands and publishers look to spend less on advertisements, on the contraryFacebook still provides them the biggest potential reach, as well as the very best targeting capabilitiesfor the best performance on each dollar invested,” said Socialbakers CEO Yuval Ben-Itzhak.
“To perform on Facebook at 2018, marketers will need to better understand sub-segments of the viewers and target them with more personalised content that will drive engagement.Marketers also need to benchmark their own ad pay against their own performance and that of the opponents to be certain that they’re spending their budget wisely and just on the best performing content.
“While Facebook has generated a great deal of changes lately that on the outside seem like they make it harder for publishers and brands, actually this is an opportunity. The publishers and brands that create engaging content, are clever about their use of different article types and benchmarks and measure their advertising spend may simply come out winning.Facebook’s audience size can not be dismissed and should rightfully remain a priority platform for marketers.”
