Out of Facebook’s mobile user base of 543 million, nearly 20% access the social network via mobile only. That’s 102 million people accessing Facebook every month only from mobile – a 23% increase over the 83 million mobile-only users in March 2012.
Facebook’s US growth has slowed to 10% in the past year, vs. a global average growth of 29%. The social networking giant has only added about 15 million US users in the last year (TechCrunch).
Mobile ads just started showing up on Facebook in February 2012. While Facebook can show up to seven ads per page on a desktop computer, users on mobile phones and tablets only see an occasional Sponsored Stories ad. And the second quarter of 2012 saw a modest decline of the number of daily active users accessing Facebook via personal computer.
If Facebook wants to keep advertising revenue up, it will have to place more focus on mobile. Sponsored Story ads are bringing in $1 million per day, with mobile responsible for $500,000. But the company can’t show nearly as many ads on the mobile newsfeed per viewer session.
Can Facebook sustain itself with mobile ad revenues as users migrate away from personal computers? TechCrunch‘s Josh Constine makes a good point: “I’m not sure Facebook will be able make enough money on mobile ads alone. It would simply have to cram too many into the feed, and that could wreck the user experience it has spent years building, and lead people to visit less.”
What do you think?
