Despite the fact that celebrities like Will Ferrell had joined the #DeleteFacebook movement, the besieged social media giant’s recent earnings showed a record profit.
Despite being surrounded by the maelstrom of controversy, Facebook’s recent quarterly report has shown it garnering record profits and earning. Put simply, it means that Facebook made more ad money per user than it did at this time last year.
Many market observers believed that the recent scandals involving Facebook might have damaged its reputation.
For, in addition to the Cambridge Analytica privacy scandal, Facebook’s name was driven through the gutter over Russian bots using the platform for interfering in American elections.
If that wasn’t enough, experts feared the worst for Facebook after the Congressional testimony of its CEO, Mark Zuckerberg. While the 33-year-old did well in front of Congresspersons, it was still feared that his mere presence there would rattle Facebook investors.
However, as the report released Wednesday showed us, all those concerns were dumbfounded.
Instead, the numbers mentioned in the recent quarterly report indicate that despite all what has happened in the last 12 months, both user, as well as advertiser confidence in Facebook, has increased.
Here’s a brief picture of Facebook’s earnings.
Revenue: $11.97 billion vs. $11.4 billion expected
Earnings per share: $1.69 vs. $1.35 expected
Daily active users: 1.45 billion vs. 1.45 billion
Monthly active users: 2.2 billion vs. 2.2 billion expected
In addition to showing increased user trust in Facebook, the recent quarterly report also showed how Facebook’s expansion into mobile has helped it garner more revenues.
Of the total ad revenue that Facebook generated in the first quarter, mobile ad revenue contributed a huge 91%, a 48% headcount increase from last year.
While it’s still early, the report released Wednesday showed that Facebook is still the go-to platform as far as advertisers are concerned. For instance, ad revenue of Facebook has increased by a massive 50 percent in just over 12 months.
Similar is the case with average revenue per user. While analysts expected that it would remain close to $5.35, the average revenue per user hit an all-time high figure of $5.53 as per the report.
Perhaps the most important metric which the recent quarterly report revealed was the number of users who are currently using Facebook. When compared with last year, Facebook’s usership has increased by 13 percent, another sign that users aren’t ditching Facebook over its numerous scandals.
