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Facebook Posts Strong Profit and Revenue Growth
- aresant 10y agoEDIT - Whoops non-paywall didn't pick up - click top result: https://www.google.com/search?q=Facebook+Posts+Strong+Profit+and+Revenue+Growth&oq=Facebook+Posts+Strong+Profit+and+Revenue+Growth&aqs=chrome..69i57j69i61j69i60j69i61j69i64&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#q=Facebook+Posts+Strong+Profit+and+Revenue+Growth&safe=active&tbm=nws https://www.google.com/search?q=Facebook+Posts+Strong+Profit...
- detaro 10y agoThat is exactly the same link... EDIT: and thanks for fixing it ;)
- melvinmt 10y agoYes, but the referrer is different ;) Thanks @aresant!
- ronjouch 10y agoIt's not; OP points to the direct wsj.com article (crippled with a "To Read the Full Story, Subscribe or Sign In " banner if not subscribed), while aresant to a search for the article on Google, and when coming with a Google referer the full article is displayed. Thanks aresant.
- detaro 10y agoIt was when I commented, it just has been edited in the meantime.
- kuschku 10y agoUse this link instead: http://www.wsj.com/article_email/facebook-posts-strong-profit-and-revenue-growth-1469650289-lMyQjAxMTE2ODI1NzYyNTc4Wj http://www.wsj.com/article_email/facebook-posts-strong-profi...
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- caminante 10y agonon-paywall: http://on.wsj.com/2ayjLKO http://on.wsj.com/2ayjLKO
- fiveoak 10y agoI'd be interested to know how much of that is from political spending during this crazy election year.
- mrweasel 10y agoThat's slightly annoying. I strongly believed that Facebook would never be profitable. Guess I was wrong.
- patejam 10y agoThey've been profitable for like 7 years now.
- amelius 10y agoIsn't that a sign that they are not investing/growing fast enough?
- dpark 10y agoCould be a sign that they're doing so well it's not possible to invest it all effectively. Could also be a sign that they are transitioning to a mature company, where hoarding money means having a long runway to respond to market changes without going under (or begging investors for capital to keep you afloat).
- nulterm 10y agoCan someone tell me why this is being downvoted? Confession of a strongly held false believe and updating on evidence saying otherwise is a good thing, isn't it? Downvoting that seems weird to me.
- dpark 10y agoProbably because he led with "That's slightly annoying." At a quick glance, it looks like he's annoyed that Facebook is doing well (which would just be petty and deserving of a downvote) as opposed to annoyed with himself for holding an incorrect belief so strongly.
- cloudjacker 10y agodownvoting that benign statement is petty.
- tedmiston 10y agoThrough clicking the "web" link it's exciting to see Google AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) [0] has support for this article. The WSJ paywall does not seem to affect it. The load time for me on average wifi was almost unnoticeable. [0]: https://www.ampproject.org/ https://www.ampproject.org/
- __derek__ 10y agoAMP versions of articles are developed by publishers, not by Google, so it's there thanks to WSJ. As for the paywall, the AMP access component[1] is not stable, so WSJ's options were basically to skip AMP (and the associated traffic) or to skip the paywall. [1]: https://github.com/ampproject/amphtml/blob/master/extensions/amp-access/amp-access.md https://github.com/ampproject/amphtml/blob/master/extensions...
- kuschku 10y agoAMP Access is funny anyway, as it just sets a display: none on the content. There're already extensions circumventing it.
- nostromo 10y agoI see the paywall on WSJ's AMP: http://imgur.com/tg7PqBu http://imgur.com/tg7PqBu Got this from this page: https://www.google.com/amp/www.wsj.com/amp/articles/facebook-posts-strong-profit-and-revenue-growth-1469650289 https://www.google.com/amp/www.wsj.com/amp/articles/facebook... (You can't view it from desktop as they're doing browser detection and forward you to the WSJ page.)
- __derek__ 10y agoOh, good catch. I'm incorrect, and they are using the component.[1] I suppose they just have the same policy for the carousel as for Google News. [1]: http://i.imgur.com/Jlu6JRX.png http://i.imgur.com/Jlu6JRX.png
- dingo_bat 10y agoI hate AMP so much. It hijacks the scrolling mechanism and makes it impossible to share the link.
- niftich 10y agoGood for them. Lots of people spend lots of time on Facebook, so ads get a lot of eyeballs, making them valuable. But I wonder what their clickthrough-rate is. For some types of ads, that's obviously not the point, but I doubt it's very high. At first, I was curious how their drive towards more video, both user- and professionally-produced, will mesh with their real name policy. But since they allow 'pages' for public figures, businesses, content creators, and other more abstract entities, they may be able to strike a happy medium where content creators can broadcast under a well-known pseudonym, while content consumers are all real people with real identities, targetable with ads. With this setup, they can mount a true challenge against established video places like Youtube and Twitch.
- jonathanjaeger 10y agoClick through rate is going to vary dramatically by vertical, but just as a very rough comparison, it's not hard to get >1% CTR on mobile Newsfeed ads while years ago on a right-hand side small ad before Newsfeed ads I was always wishing for a consistent .1% CTR.
- adotjdotr 10y agoFacebook (and Google) have the best ad products on the market without any question. I have so many DR clients printing money via FB ads, CTRs are not the metric we even focus on, it is all about conversions or measurement studies to support even investing in the platform. All my clients (big and small) love the platform, ad formats and service level. Great company, well deserved success.
- continuations 10y ago> CTRs are not the metric we even focus on, it is all about conversions If users don't even click on ads how do you measure conversions? Is it more a case of brand advertising where you're not looking for directly measurable sales?
- coderholic 10y agoThey do click on the ad, and then they buy something. The parent is saying they don't care how many people click, they only care how many people buy (a subset of those that click).
- gigatexal 10y agoI can't remember the last time I clicked an ad on Facebook, but what I do click on are sponsored articles that showcase apps or products that I am interested in but not sidebar ads.
- samfisher83 10y agoI should have bought some facebook stock, but they are worth close to 400 billion dollars. Basically they are being forecasted to generate 20-30billion a year in cashflow at that valuation. I could see them maybe doing that, but its still a high valuation.
- yueq 10y agoWe tried some display ads (non-app installation) on facebook. Since it's CPM+CPC model, our CTR was extremely low and caused CPC very expensive. I guess they have huge PV so overall performance is high. I wonder what the actual would ROI be for other publishers on FB.
- yueq 10y agoForgot to mention, our conversion was kinda low too. So eventually we gave up ads on facebook. My friends who do mobile game publishing love facebook though. Kinda varies by verticles.
- kilroy123 10y agoIt has been said many times, that something else will come around, become more popular, and overthrow facebook. I just don't see that happening now. They're still doing well. They bought Instagram. (I think a very smart move.) They'll eventually buy the next big thing. I think Facebook is here to stay.
- kuschku 10y ago> They'll eventually buy the next big thing. Unless the next big thing refuses to do so.
- vthallam 10y agoWell yes, Snapchat refused and is the only non FB mobile app in top 5 social i guess.
- AJ007 10y agoAs Snapchat has. The big strength Facebook has now is very similar to Google's. They can rake in cash without having to spend a bunch of money to generate it. Unlike Apple they don't need to produce extremely polished and innovate hardware every single year. Secondly it was very difficult for any other party to aggregate as many advertisers as Google had; Facebook pulled it off but it took a long time. Someone else may be able to do that too, but once virtually all ad revenue is digital there will be plenty of room for a third participant. There are other business models, but the ad revenue one allows companies to really laser focus on just growing and keeping their marketshare. AI and post-mobile platforms are going to change things in ways investors aren't predicting. Facebook knows this and they certainly are demonstrating it, between wit.ai/messengers "bots" and Oculus. This larger generational shift may well open up gaps that directly threaten Google's core model more so than Facebook's.
- cloudjacker 10y agoToo bad Snapchat is also turning into a tabloid
- dingaling 10y agoCurrent estimate of the population of China is 1.37 billion, and India 1.26 billion. So does that mean Facebook is now the largest affiliated group of human beings ever?
- umanwizard 10y agoSet of all Christians?
- ghurtado 10y agoFor a flexible enough definition of "affiliation", sure.
- robotresearcher 10y agoVia nation state opt-ins we have larger groups of people like the United Nations, Commonwealth (2.2B), OECD, NATO, etc. On an personal opt-in basis, the Catholic Church has 1.27B now, so Facebook is beating that. So yes, maybe Facebook has now become the largest single-org individual opt-in in history. Anyone know of a competitor?
- eru 10y agoHow many people have a Google account? (Eg because of Android phone, or gmail?)
- dredmorbius 10y agoUpwards of 3 billion last I checked. Up to 3.179 billion: http://plus.miernicki.com/ http://plus.miernicki.com/ Note that these are Google registrations, which include ... numerous things. I suspect most are Android activations. The data were the basis for my own estimates of G+ user activity -- only 9% of the (then) 2.2 billion G+ profiles showed any public activity, far fewer than that if you were looking for activity in the past month. https://ello.co/dredmorbius/post/naya9wqdemiovuvwvoyquq https://ello.co/dredmorbius/post/naya9wqdemiovuvwvoyquq
- hockeybias 10y agoThe more WeChat-like they become, the bigger their world will become. FB is well aware of that and headed in that direction. Good for them.
- encoderer 10y agoTheir huge ad scale provides a very flexible revenue machine. I think when FB misses a quarter it will be a big miss. Otherwise they can scale up ad units and make millions in incremental revenue if they need to pad a quarter.
- Animats 10y agoFrom the article: "The most lucrative ads are app-install ads and news feed ads shown in Facebook’s mobile app." Interesting. Neither of those is "social".
- ilostmykeys 10y agoFacebook vs Death. OMG who's gonna win!!!??
- downandout 10y agoGiven the sheer volume of WSJ paywall links posted here, combined with the significance of YC, surely someone at YC could call someone at WSJ and get them to bypass the paywall when the referrer is HN. This is getting ridiculous. I'm familiar with the "web" link but even that gets old when every 4th or 5th link goes to WSJ.
- ruddct 10y ago"Web". It's literally right next to the article link. Don't think biz-dev is needed here.
- downandout 10y agoIt's "literally right next to the article link" after clicking over to the comments page, which I don't normally do at first. So the process is click on article -> get annoyed by paywall -> hit back button -> click comments page -> click web link -> click to article - for a significant percentage of the links on the front page. Not awesome. Perhaps the default link on all WSJ articles should be converted to the web link. That would solve the problem too. The volume is high enough that special treatment of these links is warranted.
- vintageseltzer 10y agoNot to be rude, but are you kidding? HN has provided you with a workaround, WSJ has provided you with free content, and that is not enough? How about signing up for the WSJ?
- coderdude 10y agovintageseltzer, entitlement. Entitlement, vintageseltzer. Now that you've both met, welcome to "hacker culture."
- downandout 10y agoare you kidding? No. The volume of links to this one particular site with a very aggressive paywall has been increasing. Further, HN administrators actually change links pointing to alternative sites over to paywalled WSJ URLs when WSJ has the story (I know, because it happened with a story I submitted). WSJ has provided you with free content They're not ad supported? How about signing up for the WSJ? I might consider it, if they weren't so obnoxious with the paywall, along with inundating their pages with ads and completely blocking the loading of content when using an ad blocker. I will not reward that type of behavior, and neither should anyone else. I reported them to Google for cloaking a few weeks ago because under certain circumstances, the paywall comes up even when clicking over from Google (so, to your argument that "HN has provided [me] with a workaround" - that isn't always the case because they flagrantly violate Google's anti-cloaking policy under certain circumstances, on top of everything else).
- roymurdock 10y agoHow long before Facebook acquires Twitter out of pity?
- MichaelGG 10y agoWould Twitter be a good fit for Facebook? Their stances on ID are fairly different at the moment. I'd expect Microsoft to buy them. It'd make more sense than LinkedIn, and cheaper, too! Note: TWTR dropped by 15% today.
- icc97 10y agoFinally after about 10 years of using Facebook I was given a relevant ad last week. Admittedly I cunningly lie about my age in Facebook and say I was born in 1918 (but on the correct day/month for my half-friends who don't know the actual date).
- jgalt212 10y agoFB makes 70% of its ad revenue from mobile. Can someone please explain to me the value prop of mobile ads? Doesn't the small screen size put a lid on how much advertisers will bid for that space? After all, on web sites, the ad unit size correlates with CPM price.
- vegardx 10y agoIt would be amazing if they at least started looking at what types of ads they are running. Some, if not even most, are completely against local regulation. The rest are outright actual scams or some multi-level marketing schemes.
- perseusprime11 10y ago50 years from now, our kids wont remember Bill Gates or Steve Jobs, it will be Mark Zuckerburg sitting on a stage ready to release mosquitoes on to the audience.
- adventured 10y agoI still remember the very widespread arguments that were made before Facebook was heavily monetizing their platform/s: that they would make more money by charging subscription fees. That turns out to have been false. They're getting $14.34 per year per user in the US, up ~50% over last year. There's no scenario under which they could match that with a subscription service (most people would never be willing to pay). They're averaging $3.84 per user worldwide, up 38% over last year. You can't go around raising subscription fees by 40% or 50% per year on most of the world, but you can optimize delivering them advertising. You can boost ad rates by 50% without harming the user experience one bit. The ad approach won again, easily.In Facebook it's going to end up producing another eventual $20+ billion annual profit money printing juggernaut ala Google. No subscription service in history has ever come close to accomplishing that sort of outcome, none ever will.
- dschiptsov 10y agoWhich is a peak, because Facebook is neither new nor special even in the third world.
- known 10y ago"Advertising on mobile devices accounted for 84% of Facebook’s $6.2 billion in advertising sales in the latest quarter" Proper Adblock on mobile devices will dilute their revenues :)
- facepalm 10y agoSo are people basically content, or do they still long for something more free? Has the believe in something Diaspora-like evaporated completely since they screwed up?