Facebook has proved to be the most popular social network for advertising, this time in figures.
Photo: Reuters/Robert Galbraith
According to Reuters, Facebook revenue doubled to $1.6 billion in first half of 2011. Net income in the first half of 2011 came to almost $500 million, reported the unknown source with knowledge of Facebook financial matters.
These results is a sub-sequence of the investors push in its valuation to roughly $80 billion in private markets. Facebook has a 750 million users and its popularity among advertisers continues to grow.
In comparison, Facebook earned $355 million in net income in the first nine months of 2010 on revenue of $1.2 billion, according to documents that Goldman Sachs provided to clients during share offering this year.
«We really see Facebook as becoming like the operating system for delivering ads on the Internet,» said Dave Williams, the CEO of Blinq Media, which runs ad campaigns for companies on Facebook. He added that large brand advertisers and local businesses are increasingly spending marketing dollars on Facebook, drawn by its vast number of users and the ability to target ads to consumers based on their interests.
Facebook accounted for nearly one-third of all Internet display advertisement impressions in the United States in June, more than the combined total of Yahoo, Microsoft Corp., Google and AOL Inc., according to analytics firm comScore.
Facebook’s system of ‘liking’ pages provides the unprecedented source of valuable data that other online services can’t match. In addition, its going to track brands impact during London Olympics.
«Companies like Yahoo are relying on third party user behavioral data based on things like cookies. On Facebook that’s data that users have revealed about themselves,» said Dave Williams.
The social network’s increasing popularity has allowed boosting the rates for its ads to 62 percent between the fourth quarter of 2010 and the second quarter of 2011, according to Efficient Frontier, another firm that helps companies deliver ad campaigns on Facebook.
A significant part of Facebook’s revenue also comes from a purchase of virtual goods, such as digital cars or animals that enhance the experience in social games such as Zynga’s FarmVille.
Facebook is constantly adding new options and services. It has improved tagging options and is about to introduce new features this month such as music services from Spotify and Rhapsody.