Facebook mobile advertising profit rockets to an eye-watering $791 million!

Facebook’s second quarter results show it has seen a surge in mobile advertising revenue to $791 million.

Facebook once attracted criticism for failing to make the most of the potential of mobile advertising. But as its most recent financial results for the second quarter of the year indicate, the social media giant has definitely worked out how to capitalise on a booming market.

“We had a good second quarter,” said Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook founder and chief executive. “Our community has continued to grow, and we see a lot of opportunity ahead as we connect the rest of the world.”

The figures show that the company’s revenue shot up by 61 per cent over Q2 2014, meaning that profit more than doubled to $791 million (£465.1 million), compared to just $333 million in the same period last year.

Within that, mobile advertising revenue soared by a dramatic 151 per cent year-on-year, so that 62 per cent of overall ad revenue came from mobile devices. That’s particularly impressive given that Facebook was only just starting to develop its mobile ad offering two years ago when it was floated.

Still, the firm has been locked in an intense battle for the mobile ad market with major competitors like Twitter and Google. The latter is still by far the biggest player in the game – figures from eMarketer reported in the Wall Street Journal show Google’s market share is expected to fall this year, but it will still control nearly 40 per cent. In contrast, Facebook is anticipated to hold 18 per cent of the mobile ad market.

There is clearly still room for Facebook to grow – chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg told Reuters that the company enjoyed 1.5 million advertising customers and ad growth across every geographic region.

Not only are current advertisers spending more, but the firm’s ad customer base is increasing all the time.

Mr Zuckerberg also told Reuters that Facebook is thinking outside the box about its attempt to drive further mobile ad growth – he said that the “cheap and easy” option of putting ads and payment features on the separate Messenger app was unlikely to happen.

Writing for Forbes, Robert Hof argues that video ads will be the next frontier, though executives have said that it will not bring in much revenue in the near term. Either way, Facebook still has a lot to do to catch up to Google.