Facebook shares increase by mobile ad growth

The social media giant’s Q4 earnings report as of Wednesday gave the newest measure of its strong performance this year.

Facebook Inc. on Wednesday reported its fourth quarter and overall 2015 earnings, revealing that it now makes an average of $3.73 off of each user globally.

Revenue in the quarter that ended on December 31 rose to $5.84 billion from $3.85 billion the prior year.

In fact, Facebook’s user base didn’t actually grow that much, but its monetization engine continues to improve, and it has started multiple efforts to get the rest of the world online to greater expand the base of users it can inevitably monetize.

In total, Mark Zuckerberg’s company posted revenue of 17.9 billion USA dollars (£12.5bn) in revenue for the year, up from 12.4 billion U.S. dollars (£8.7bn) in 2014, an increase of 44%. Facebook also notes that 80 percent of its ad revenue stems from mobile, an increase of 69 percent over past year. “We continue to invest in better serving our community, building our business, and connecting the world”, he said.

Daily active users (DAUs) – DAUs were 1.04 billion on average for December 2015, an increase of 17% year-over-year. Monthly active users increased 14% year-over-year to a total of 1.59 billion, which exceeded expectations of 1.58 billion.

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Social networking remains Facebook’s foundation.

“It signifies the importance of what they’re providing to advertisers”, he said. The company generated a net profit of USD 2.27 billion or USD 0.79 per share, up from USD 1.52 billion or USD 0.54 per share a year earlier.

Past year marked a big investment period for Facebook, which hired thousands more people and poured money into projects including its virtual-reality arm Oculus VR, artificial intelligence and extending Internet access to remote areas.

At the risk of alienating users, Facebook has also been far more willing to monetize its popular Instagram property. This was slower than previous year. Speaking to Re/Code about the advertising revolution, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg said, “In terms of replacing TV, we certainly don’t think we’re going to replace any one medium, our growth is pretty broad”.