Facebook has surpassed expectations on all fronts in its second quarter, growing in not just profit and revenue, but in its already-massive user base and mobile advertising and usage of its “family” of apps like Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp. Nevertheless, the world’s largest online social network’s stock price slid after the quarterly results came out, as expenses soared 82% and cut into earnings. Some investors may have been waiting for even better results, or looking to cash in profits with Facebook’s shares trading near record highs. Facebook said it had 1.31 billion people visiting from a mobile device at least once a month, on average, during the quarter, up 23% from a year earlier. Facebook had 1.49 billion monthly users overall, up 13%. It also had 968 million daily active users overall and 844 million on mobile devices. “Once again Facebook has proven its ability to attract and retain users,” said Forrester Research analyst Nate Elliott. “It’s particularly impressive that users are more engaged than ever before – that the percentage of monthly users who visit every day continues to grow.” That is in contrast to Twitter, which continues to worry investors with stalling user growth and saw its stock price drop to its lowest level in more than a year on Wednesday. Facebook’s mobile advertising represented 76% of the total advertising revenue during the second quarter, proof that the company continues to attract advertisers to where its users are – on smartphones and other hand-held gadgets. That is up from 62% a year earlier. While still far behind the number one, Google, Facebook has been steadily growing its share of the worldwide digital advertising market. Its share was 7.9% in 2014, up from 5.8% a year earlier, according to research firm eMarketer. By the end of this year, eMarketer expects Facebook’s share to surpass 9% of the 171 billion-dollar (£110bn) market. Google, meanwhile, is expected to hold on to its top post with about 31% of the market, down slightly from last year. In all, Menlo Park, California-based Facebook’s second-quarter net income was 715 million dollars (£458m), or 25 cents per share, down from 788 million dollars, or 30 cents per share, a year earlier. Excluding special expenses...
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It’s that time of the year again. With 2014 behind us, we have come up with a few predictions for 2015 regarding the mobile advertising industry. Mobile is continuing to disrupt the industry, and the most successful marketers in 2015 are the ones that will embrace what mobile has to offer, but do so responsibly. As the technology available becomes richer, and as consumers continue to become more entrenched in mobile, the opportunities to engage with them continue to increase. Marketers need to capitalize and harness the big data that they have to drive engagement and that engagement needs to move well beyond the click. At the same time, the industry needs to continue taking measures to combat ad fraud. Here’s a snapshot of my predictions for the year: Mobile Won’t Be Synonymous With ‘Simple’ Anymore During 2015, it will become acceptable to expect mobile users to complete more complicated tasks that were typically reserved only for their desktop counterparts in the past. Marketers will no longer need over-simplified conversions for mobile devices. Purchases that require long sign-up forms (insurance quotes, product signups, shopping cart completions) are no longer daunting for the experienced smartphone user and this provides marketers much more flexibility in what they can serve. Hyper-Local Conversions Will Actually Happen We’ve heard about hyper local for years, and beacons have been all the buzz in the last year or so. In 2015, I believe that brick and mortar businesses will begin to fully harness hyper-local technology, such as iBeacons. They’ll use these not only to connect with consumers in the area, but to track in-store conversions with consumers that they’ve previously engaged with via advertising. These type of in-store conversions have largely been ignored up until now and will be an exciting opportunity for marketers in 2015. The Internet of Things is Expanding Mobile won’t just mean iOS or Android anymore. This year, more semi-mobile devices will be allowing limited advertising, such as set-top boxes, TVs, kiosks and self-checkouts. To the contrary, wearables that have become mainstream in 2014 will not really have an impact on the advertising landscape in 2015. Bigger Data in Mobile Continues to Grow Big data in mobile will only continue to get bigger....
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