Facebook has been warning for months that Apple measures to protect privacy are making personalized advertising more difficult. Although Apple’s rules are now taking effect, Facebook’s business has recently continued to grow rapidly.
In the past quarter, Facebook profited massively from the fact that more and more advertising spending went online. Sales of the world’s largest online network jumped 56 percent year-on-year to a good 29 billion dollars (24.5 billion euros).
At $ 10.4 billion, profits were double what they were a year ago. But for the future, Facebook warns of more headwinds.
The main reason for the growth in the past quarter was an increase in the average price per ad by 47 percent, as Facebook announced after the US market closed on Wednesday. Meanwhile, the number of advertisements displayed rose by only six percent. The ad spaces on Facebook are allocated in an auction process. In the corona pandemic, more and more advertisers are trying to reach people online – the competition for space on the Facebook platform is correspondingly fiercer.
The number of daily active users on Facebook rose within three months by around 30 million to 1.91 billion. 2.9 billion users access the platform every month – 50 million more than in the first quarter. At least one of the Group’s apps, such as WhatsApp or Instagram, is used by 2.76 billion people every day – that’s 40 million more than three months ago. On a monthly basis there are 3.5 billion users. In Europe, the number of Facebook users fell slightly in the past quarter – from 423 to 420 million.
The advertising revenues jumped high, although Apple activated its data protection innovations in the middle of the last quarter, which Facebook sharply criticized. App developers must now obtain explicit permission if they want to observe the behavior of an iPhone user across different services and applications for advertising purposes. As many reject this, Facebook warns that the online network’s ability to display advertising to specific user groups will suffer as a result.
In the current quarter, the effect of the Apple measures will be felt more strongly than in the past quarter, emphasized Facebook’s chief financial officer David Wehner. The percentage growth in online advertising will also be lower in the further course of the year because, in contrast to the previous quarter, the fresh figures will be compared with business figures from 2020 that were already spurred by the Corona crisis, he warned.
In the past quarter, Facebook earned a worldwide average of $ 10.12 per user – almost as much as it was last in the Christmas quarter. Not only Facebook is benefiting from the online advertising boom. The day before, Google, Facebook’s strongest rival in the battle for advertising dollars, had also announced a record quarter.
Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg used the conference call with analysts after the figures were presented to talk about the concept of the “metaverse” – a comprehensive virtual world in which he believes people will spend more and more time. Zuckerberg wants Facebook to play a leading role and most recently named several people responsible for the project.
Zuckerberg described the metaverse as a “virtual environment in which you can be present with other people in digital spaces.” You could imagine it as “an Internet in which you are right in the middle of it instead of looking at it”.
The Facebook share fell in pre-market trading on Thursday by around 3.5 percent, although the quarterly results clearly exceeded the expectations of the analysts.
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