The latest quarterly earnings report from Facebook shows a 49 percent jump in advertising revenue from last year, from $6.8 billion to $10.1 billion.
"Our community continues to grow, now with nearly 2.1 billion people using Facebook every month, and nearly 1.4 billion people using it daily. Instagram also hit a big milestone this quarter, now with 500 million daily actives," shared Mark Zuckerberg, the co-founder & CEO of Facebook, during a conference call.
The report shows that mobile advertising revenue continues to dominate the total earnings, up to 88 percent this quarter compared to 84 percent in the same quarter of 2016.
Speaking to the investors and speculators attending the call, Zuckerberg stressed video as an investment channel, adding that "we've seen Stories in Instagram and Status in WhatsApp grow very quickly, each with more than 300 million daily actives, and also for consuming video content."
Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook's COO, shared that after allowing advertisers the option to run ads in videos alone, "over 70% of ad breaks up to 15 seconds in length on Facebook and Audience Network viewed to completion, most with the sound on."
Speaking of the recent decision to employ a penetration pricing strategy for Oculus, Zuckerberg reaffirmed that, "at $199, we think it's going to help us bring great virtual reality experiences to more people," adding that it will begin shipping the product early next year.
In anticipation of its measures to correct the alleged misuse of Facebook's tools for propaganda, Zuckerberg spoke the steps being taken would raise costs while announcing that "we're about to start rolling out a tool that lets you see all of the ads a page is running, and also an archive of ads political advertisers have run in the past."
Zuckerberg said that the priority at Facebook is "protecting our community is more important than maximizing our profits."