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Facebook Climbs to 1.59B Users, Beats Q4 Estimates with $5.8B Revenue

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Re: Facebook Climbs to 1.59B Users, Beats Q4 Estimates with $5.8B Revenue

#61

Post by jgh »

spikels wrote: post #43
physcab wrote: post #24

Here's the thing that most people don't know unless they are in the "industry": * The gaming industry is most likely driving a lot of this growth. I'm sure Machine Zone and Supercell are doing between $5M - $10M a day on FB alone. * FB is re-defining attribution. They want to bring in big brands and are re-defining last-click to "Multi-touch". Their end game ofcourse is to say the reason why you decided to make a tri…

Pretty sure gaming is NOT where Facebook's revenue growth is coming from. Almost all the growth has been coming from mobile advertising for a couple years now.

who spends the money on most of those ads?

Re: Facebook Climbs to 1.59B Users, Beats Q4 Estimates with $5.8B Revenue

#62

Post by miles_matthias »

At my company we're realizing how great of an advertising channel Facebook is, in the fact that we can immediately narrow down our target audience to people who have liked a certain page.

It's just very weird to me that a social network that everyone my age and younger never use. I never, ever post to Facebook and rarely look at it because it's just my family on it. I connect with friends over snapchat and meet new people on Twitter.

Meeting new people is nearly impossible on Facebook. Maybe that's why it's such a great advertising platform with such great revenue? Everyone is on it (your whole family joined) and the only way for a company to get your attention is to pay.

Re: Facebook Climbs to 1.59B Users, Beats Q4 Estimates with $5.8B Revenue

#63

Post by putlake »

physcab wrote: post #24

Here's the thing that most people don't know unless they are in the "industry": * The gaming industry is most likely driving a lot of this growth. I'm sure Machine Zone and Supercell are doing between $5M - $10M a day on FB alone. * FB is re-defining attribution. They want to bring in big brands and are re-defining last-click to "Multi-touch". Their end game ofcourse is to say the reason why you decided to make a tri…

If what you are saying is true, then it's phone apps (games) driving this revenue. In that case, it seems to me that one should actually buy Apple stock. Because phone apps will only spend this kind of money on Facebook ads if they are able to generate RoI in the app store via in-app purchases. And Apple gets a 30% cut of that without doing anything. So Apple must be making as much revenue as Facebook from this phenomenon.

Re: Facebook Climbs to 1.59B Users, Beats Q4 Estimates with $5.8B Revenue

#64

Post by throwaway198374 »

jrcii wrote: post #5

Hopefully for their investors' sake that revenue isn't significantly driven by click fraud, a rumor that's been circulating for years http://thesocialmediamonthly.com/startup-ceo-alleges-massive... * Is anyone aware of evidence of the extent of click fraud on Facebook? I see a lot of discussion about it but not a lot of data.

Sorry for the throwaway, I work in ad tech. Other posters are saying they see hardly any fraud on Facebook. My employer is a more traditional ad tech company (think exchange and direct buys) and we estimate 60-70% of our exchange inventory is fraudulent, and at least 15% of our impressions are delivered against fraudulent sites (of course we don't tell the customers). In reality the numbers are probably higher. The problem is that literally everyone except the end customer is making money off this. As soon as anyone talks about the need to do something about it the whole "let's not rock the boat", "what about our revenue targets", "well you can't tell Sales that" crowd comes out.

I personally think there's a reckoning coming soon to traditional ad tech. There is so much fraud, such ludicrous and impossible revenue and impression targets, so much pushback against shitty and annoying advertising, and so little incentive to be honest with the customer. It can't last like this.

Re: Facebook Climbs to 1.59B Users, Beats Q4 Estimates with $5.8B Revenue

#65

Post by wwwong »

physcab wrote: post #59
spikels wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty sure gaming is NOT where Facebook's revenue growth is coming from. Almost all the growth has been coming from mobile advertising for a couple years now.

Here's an exercise. Go to the App Store, click on Top Grossing. Out of the 150 apps displayed, how many are gaming-related? I counted 113. Thats 75%. I don't have the charts but you can compare this to a year ago period. My guess is that percentage has grown. This is not an accident.

FB gaming is dead. It's not the reason why their revenue is growing.

Re: Facebook Climbs to 1.59B Users, Beats Q4 Estimates with $5.8B Revenue

#66

Post by wwwong »

physcab wrote: post #24

Here's the thing that most people don't know unless they are in the "industry": * The gaming industry is most likely driving a lot of this growth. I'm sure Machine Zone and Supercell are doing between $5M - $10M a day on FB alone. * FB is re-defining attribution. They want to bring in big brands and are re-defining last-click to "Multi-touch". Their end game ofcourse is to say the reason why you decided to make a tri…

Disagree with many of these sentiments here. As a performance marketer, and someone who also was in the games industry:

FB Gaming market has flattened. FB has taken numerous methods to rely less on gaming revenue. FB revenues was 10% from game companies when the company went IPO. Much less now, not even mentioned.

Mobile is good at driving mobile installs at scale, limited competitors here. But as a general performance marketing channel, they do better at ecommerce and consumer focused businesses.

Most of FB advertising revenue is coming in from Brand marketing. Performance is steadily growing, but not as you suggest, the reason for this growth.

Re: Facebook Climbs to 1.59B Users, Beats Q4 Estimates with $5.8B Revenue

#67

Post by mbesto »

nl wrote: post #40
mbesto wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure you're completely understanding how it works. I can actually run an ad on Facebook and with a conversion pixel I can see what the ROI return is. Read this for more details: http://blog.wishpond.com/post/63739323752/how-to-use-the-fac...

"Attribution" means more than just the last click. If you see an ad on TV, and then 2 minutes later receive an ad on Facebook for the same product, click through and buy then how much is the TV ad responsible vs the Facebook ad. Same for Youtube ads. Typically (as a very broad rule) people don't click through to purchase from a Youtube ad. And yet lab (and other) studies show an increased propensity to purchase a spe…

True, which is why you need to augment it with other services...for example Custora: https://www.custora.com/tour/retention_lifecycle_marketing/

Re: Facebook Climbs to 1.59B Users, Beats Q4 Estimates with $5.8B Revenue

#68

Post by dang »

thieving_magpie wrote: post #54
morgante wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Except that most of Americans between 16-22 (the oldest FB audience) have quit. That's an extraordinary claim and requires extraordinary evidence. You don't have any. As someone who's actually in that demographic I can tell you it's patently false. Facebook continues to be the hub of social networking, particularly on college campuses. If you're having an event of any sort, Facebook is the place you announce it. Me…

Cool your jets there, sassafras. There is evidence of a downward trend, though probably not "most" teens. Enjoying the indignant platitudes though. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2015/02...

Please don't be rude to others on HN, especially when you think they're wrong. The GP shouldn't have been so aggressive, but replying like this makes things worse.

Your comment would be fine without its first and third sentences.

Re: Facebook Climbs to 1.59B Users, Beats Q4 Estimates with $5.8B Revenue

#69

Post by doctorpangloss »

physcab wrote: post #24

Here's the thing that most people don't know unless they are in the "industry": * The gaming industry is most likely driving a lot of this growth. I'm sure Machine Zone and Supercell are doing between $5M - $10M a day on FB alone. * FB is re-defining attribution. They want to bring in big brands and are re-defining last-click to "Multi-touch". Their end game ofcourse is to say the reason why you decided to make a tri…

A lot of people misunderstood you. physcab isn't talking about gaming on Facebook. He's talking about Game of War and Clash of Clans, which are both mobile games. Like another poster has said, games are 75% of the top grossing on the App Store. And absolutely most of Facebook's revenue, if not literally all of it, is mobile gaming ads (especially slot machines).

I'm not sure if the gaming industry is driving the growth per se. Based on my experience, it's really people buying into smartphones and paying for software (in the form of IAP in games) for the first time in their lives.

To be pedantic, people going upmarket in Android is probably their source of growth in revenue. iOS has been pretty rich for a while now and it's unlikely that there are users who are spending more or more users who have started spending. But Android had a HUGE amount of space to grow in terms of Android phone owners who actually spent money (based on numbers I've seen in 2015). I would imagine that's where the money's coming from—the average Android user has gotten a little richer, started spending more on IAP on Android, and therefore game developers bid higher on ads targeting them.

It's like Upstream Color, except instead of a mind altering slug drug, it's Slots Vacation.

Re: Facebook Climbs to 1.59B Users, Beats Q4 Estimates with $5.8B Revenue

#70

Post by nickonline »

wwwong wrote: post #65
physcab wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's an exercise. Go to the App Store, click on Top Grossing. Out of the 150 apps displayed, how many are gaming-related? I counted 113. Thats 75%. I don't have the charts but you can compare this to a year ago period. My guess is that percentage has grown. This is not an accident.

FB gaming is dead. It's not the reason why their revenue is growing.

He's not talking about FB gaming. He's talking about mobile games.

Mobile games that are not played on Facebook are paying Facebook for ad space so that they can reel in additional whales. Games like Clash of Clans & Gears of War.

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