It’s that time of year again where the major tech companies are releasing their Q1 results. While marketers can largely ignore much of the information out there, you will find some important points that can give good insight into advertising and marketing activities.
Facebook, for example, reported that they made $5.38 billion in Q1 2016, with $1.51 billion in net income. This is a 52% increase from Q1 2015. 97% of that money comes from advertising, which has done very well. Year over year ad revenue went up by a remarkable 57%. This was largely the result of a 76% increase in mobile ad revenue.
There were many factors that led to this increase. To start with, their average daily audience went up by 16%. The amount of money they made off of each member also went up by 33% (up to $3.32 per user), which is huge. Looking at monthly users, Facebook is up to 1.65 billion unique people using their service, which is up 15% YoY. Perhaps most impressive is that they have 1.09 billion accessing the service on any given day.
Not surprisingly, Facebook also reported that it is running more ads and increasing the amount they charge per ad. Over the past year, Facebook increased their overall ad impressions by 50% and their average charge per ad went up by 5%.
This is great news for Facebook, of course, but also shows that marketers and brands are finding these advertisements to be very effective, which is why they are investing more money than ever into them.
