Facebook’s little ads are making big bucks

Mobile marketing is here to stay, but are mobile ads as profitable as they could be? With growth for mobile advertising projected at 80% in 2012, Facebook ads are an increasingly important section of the Internet for product marketers. In the first quarter of 2012, Facebook generated over one billion dollars in revenue, 82% of which came straight from ads. And it’s certainly true that the Internet is king — the revenue Facebook generated in just three months outpaced People magazine’s yearly gross. Accessing the social networking site on mobile devices also wins the day, with the average Facebook user spending approximately seven and a half hours per month using the platform on their smartphone, about an hour more per month than the average Facebook desktop user. And even though 60% of you claim to never click on ads or sponsored posts, Facebook’s ad revenue equals a profit of $9.51 per each of its 900 million active users.

What does this mean in terms of the future? It means Facebook’s IPO may not have been as ill-advised as previously thought. Facebook’s ad revenue increased 37% between 2011 and 2012. According to an analyst for JPMorgan, Facebook’s mobile ad revenue is projected beyond $300 million per quarter in 2012. The success of Facebook’s mobile platform was a shock to many, but ad revenues continue to be more profitable with smartphone usage than desktop clicks.

If Facebook were a country, it would be a large and highly profitable one. On mobile devices alone, Facebook has 450 million active users — which adds up to more people than the fourth and fifth largest countries in the world, Indonesia and Brazil, combined. And at the rate they’re going, Facebook stands to make more than $8 billion in ads alone this year. It’s a dog-eat-dog world for the mobile marketplace, but Facebook continues to lead the pack. But what does that mean for you? Check out the infographic below to learn a little more about the big bucks.

Source: OnlineMBA.com