Global social media facts are often so large they are hard to wrap our neurons around. One billion today and 10 billion next year.
Facebook doesn’t disappoint.
It turned in another strong quarter with some surprising statistics, such as a 247% increase in ad prices, hints at Facebook groups spinning out into their own app and no desire to build their own payments platform.
Keep reading for a quick summary of the most important parts of the earnings call including my own analysis and what the future of Facebook marketing looks like for businesses.
Facebook facts and statistics everyone will be talking about
Here are 22 top facts and figures that make interesting reading. The growing role of mobile is the standout!
- $3.2b in total revenue over the 3 months
- Advertising revenue grew 64% year on year
- 1 billion video views a day in September
- 8,300 employees, which is up 40% since last year
- 1.5 million total advertisers on Facebook
- $766 million in free cash flow in the third quarter
- 64% of monthly active users log on every day
- 1.35 billion people log into Facebook each month
- 703m use Facebook mobile each day (40% growth for the year)
- 700 million people use Facebook groups every month
- “Whatsapp” has 600m monthly active users, on track for 1 billion
- 3 billion links have been created through Facebook applink
- Price per Facebook ad increased 247% due to higher quality
- Total advertising impressions declined 56% over the year
- Payment volume from games decreased 2% year over year
- Instagram has 200m users with a goal to get to 1 billion in the short term
- Average Instagram user spends 21 minutes per day on the app
- 1.12 billion use Facebook mobile each month, which is up 250 million since last year
- Mobile is 66% of ad revenue up from 49% during the same time last year
- Users respond 20% faster on FB messenger app versus native FB messenger
- 864 million daily active users up from 829 million in the second quarter of 2014
- 1 billion engagements every week between public figures and their Facebook fanpage fans
What these stats mean for you
1. Create relevant quality content
First, businesses will struggle if they automate content creation and share generic posts that aren’t very relevant to their audience. As tools make it easier for both consumers and businesses to create content quickly, the competition for visibility in the Facebook newsfeed will grow. Keep in mind that the World Cup alone generated 10 billion interactions, and public figures averaged 1 billion interactions daily in September. The businesses that maintain high engagement will be those that focus on sharing personalized stories and creating meaningful experiences for their fans.
2. You will need to make your Facebook ads more effective
Second, ad prices jumped 247%! This means businesses need to be clearer about who their ideal customer is if they want to see a good return on investment with Facebook ads. A simple yet effective strategy is to collect the email addresses of your Facebook fans and then retarget them by uploading these emails into Facebook’s advertising platform. Use a Facebook contest tool like the one Jeff uses, which has an average conversion rate of 17.5% from fan to email address over the last 2,000 campaigns run. If you haven’t grown your page to at least 500 fans organically, this strategy won’t work. I suggest you focus on boosting engagement first using a free tool and keep in mind that 456 million users access Facebook on mobile every day. Make content easy to engage with on a mobile device.
What’s next?
1. Facebook will spin groups out into their own app within the next year
Mark specifically said that the mobile app ecosystem likes apps that are very good at doing one thing really well. He also stated that in Facebook’s effort to connect the world, reaching 1b users per app is a critical milestone to begin monetization.
2. Facebook will not build its own payments platform
Speculation around Facebook creating it’s own payments platform post-poaching of Paypal’s CEO is unfounded. Facebook will take a partnership approach to creating a seamless payment experience on the platform versus building something themselves. This is good news for Paypal, Stripe, and other major players in the online payments space.
3. Facebook’s mission is to connect the world
Facebook will focus on connecting and understanding the digital world and building the next generation computing platform over the next 3-10 years. In the short term (3 years) they’ll grow and serve the existing community of 864m daily Facebook users and 700m daily users of Facebook groups as an example. To date, Facebook users viewed video 1b times per day in September and spent 21 minutes per day on Instagram. In the mid term (5 years) they’ll focus on making Messenger, Whatsapp, search, and Instagram into their own business behemoths by helping them reach 1b users. Whatsapp is at 600m users and well on the path to reach 1b in mid term. Over the long term (10 years) Facebook will focus on getting more of the worlds population internet via internet.org and on creating the next great computing platform via Oculus rift. Mark believes Oculus is well placed to shape the long term of computing. He says:
“Virtual and augmented reality will be part of future of computing over next 10-15 years“.
Tell me in the comments
Do you think Facebook will make Facebook Groups a separate mobile application? Do you like the separate Facebook messenger app? Did any of these figures surprise you?