Facebook posted impressive Q2 2017 results, with its profit increasing 71 per cent year-on-year and monthly active users (MAU) hitting the 2 billion milestone, as the social media giant reportedly plans a smart speaker product.
“We had a good second quarter and first half of the year,” said Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO. “Our community is now two billion people and we’re focusing on bringing the world closer together.”
Total revenue rose 44.8 per cent year-on-year to $9.3 billion while Facebook posted a profit of $3.9 billion.
Both daily active users (1.3 billion) and MAU for the core platform were up 17 per cent year-on-year, while WhatsApp also hit 1 billion daily active users (it hit 1 billion MAU in in February last year).
Ad revenue
As in previous results, ad revenue made up almost all of the firm’s revenue ($9.2 billion) and 87 per cent of this was from mobile ad revenue, compared to 84 per cent in Q2 2016.
Facebook may be working on a smart speaker product, but rather than voice recognition functionality the focus will be on a 15-inch touch panel supplied by LG Display, Digitimes reported.
Mobile ad revenue grew 53 per cent year-on-year to $8 billion.
Instagram Stories, a successful clone of Snapchat Stories, and WhatsApp Status, a smiliar feature, both now have more than 250 million people using it daily.
According to Zuckerberg, Facebook is “working to build a business ecosystem around Messenger and WhatsApp.”
He explained that WhatsApp “is still early on the monetisation side here, although we have started showing ads to a small number of people on Messenger. I want to see us move a little faster here, but I’m confident that we’re going to get this right over the long term.”
Sheryl Sandberg said that “From driving brand awareness to increasing sales, businesses can now use full-screen Instagram Stories ads for any goal.”
She also said one of the firm’s top priorities was helping businesses leverage the power of mobile.
“Facebook and Instagram are the best platforms to reach people and drive business results. We have over 70 million businesses on Facebook, and I’m excited to announce today that we now have more than 15 million business profiles on Instagram,” she said.
Sandberg hailed video as a “big opportunity in mobile” and said the firm is developing short-form “snackable” content.
“We’re working hard to help marketers adopt mobile-first video ad strategies for Facebook and Instagram” she said, adding that “in a mobile environment, native mobile video ads typically outperform more traditional ads.”
Smart speaker
The product will be manufactured by Pegatron Technology, a Taiwanese manufacturing firm, and will be released early next year, the report said.
The product would compete with the likes of Amazon’s Echo and Apple’s Homepod in the speaker market.
