Today, CEO Mark Zuckerberg, COO Sheryl Sandberg, and CFO David Wehner spoke at Facebook’s fourth quarter 2018 earnings call, discussing accomplishments, challenges, and goals for 2019. Here are the highlights.
Users and Revenue
- Daily active users (DAUs) – DAUs were 1.52 billion on average for December 2018, an increase of nine percent year-over-year.
- Monthly active users (MAUs) – MAUs were 2.32 billion as of December 31, 2018, an increase of nine percent year-over-year.
- Mobile advertising revenue – Mobile advertising revenue represented approximately 93 percent of advertising revenue for the fourth quarter of 2018, up from approximately 89 percent of advertising revenue in the fourth quarter of 2017.
- Revenue– Revenue is $13.7 billion.
Community
While pushing to improve community features like Marketplace and fundraisers, Facebook will work on rolling out dating features across the world.
Video
Because video is growing rapidly, Zuckerberg believes it is a critical part of Facebook’s future. Users are spending more time on the platform, primarily because of video. But as Facebook moves video away from the feed, creating new tabs like Watch and IGTV, a business challenge arises.
“Video monetizes significantly less well per minute than people interacting in feeds,” said Zuckerberg. “As video grows, it will still displace some other services where we’d probably make more money.”
Meaning, as users spend more time away from feeds to watch videos on Watch or IGTV, they are spending less time away from an area where most ads live.
Messaging
Facebook plans to make WhatsApp and Messenger faster and simpler by rolling out payments and by creating tools that will help users easily connect with businesses. Additionally, Facebook will increase privacy and security by making messages ephemeral and by encrypting people’s conversations.
Stories
Facebook is still focused on making the platform more Stories-focused. Despite slow growth, Zuckerberg is optimistic that Facebook Stories will grow in popularity over time.
Election Interference
Facebook is currently partnered with governments and outside experts to prevent foreign interference.
Check out Facebook’s 2018 3rd Quarter Earnings Report.
By Anne Felicitas, editor at AdvertiseMint, best Facebook advertising agency
