MUMBAI: Internet social networking site Facebook has posted strong results for its Q1 buoyed largely contributed by mobile advertisement revenues.
The company said it earned $219 million for the quarter, up from $205 million, a year earlier. Revenue increased to $1.46 billion from $ 1.06 billion.
The company’s advertising revenue surged 43 per cent compared with the same quarter last year to $ 1.25 billion. Mobile advertising accounted for 30 percent of the company’s total ad revenue.
Investors had been worried about Facebook's ability to grow mobile revenue since its initial public offering in May 2012. The reason being although the number of people who access Facebook on smartphones and tablet computers has been growing quickly, Facebook didn't begin showing ads to those users until last year.
The number of users who access Facebook every day, on average, grew 8 percent to 665 million in March, from 618 million in December.
"We've made a lot of progress in the first few months of the year. We have seen strong growth and engagement across our community and launched several exciting products,” founder Mark Zuckerberg said.
The new products have come at significant cost though as spending on infrastructure and personnel sent first-quarter expenses 60 per cent higher to $ 1.08 billion.
Instagram, which Facebook agreed to buy in April 2012 when it had 22 million, now has 100 million monthly users, up from 22 million.
Facebook will continue to focus on building Instagram and its community, rather than seeking to make money from the application, I am really optimistic about the business opportunity there too, Zuckerberg said.