Mobile ads at Facebook now make up more than half of total advertising revenues, according to its Q4 2013 results.

Mobile ad revenues contributed around 53 per cent of Facebook’s ad business in Q4, more than double the share it brought in a year earlier, and raking in $1.25bn (£760m) for the company.

This marks the first ‘billion-dollar quarter’ for mobile at Facebook, up from zero when it started monetising mobile in February 2012. Black Friday, the first Friday after Thanksgiving Day in the US, was the company’s single biggest mobile ad day of the quarter, attributed to bargain hunters checking the site while out shopping.

Total revenue was $2.59bn, an increase of 63 per cent on Q4 2012, with ad revenues making up $2.34bn of that. Profit at the company reached $1.5bn, a huge growth from 2012, where full-year profit was just $53m.

Monthly and daily visitors continue to grow, despite criticism that Facebook is past it, with 1.23bn monthly and 757m daily users seen in Q4. This is slightly slower than growth seen in Q3. Active use on mobile are still climbing, with 556m daily visitors and 945m monthly visitors, growth of 49 per cent and 39 per cent respectively. The company did not break out figures for mobile-only users.

The company said app installs ads are ‘generating very healthy revenue growth’ and pointed to its ‘interesting’ test of Facebook ads in third-party apps, but said it won’t have meaningful results for a while. Facebook is also making ‘steady progress’ with brands, the company says, and its auto-play video ad product, which began testing in December, will be key to getting more on board.

Facebook has further honed its targeting capabilities, doubling its Custom Audiences sements from 500 to 1000, and says News Feed ads generate an eight times ROI, tracked using Facebook’s Offline Conversion Measurement capability.

For the first time, Mark Zuckerberg will be delivering a keynote at Mobile World Congress.

Written for Mobile Marketing Magazine and first published here: http://mobilemarketingmagazine.com/half-of-facebook-ad-revenue-comes-from-mobile/#sZKcPU5tPWjJ2x2D.99