Facebook’s Q1 2017 earnings report in 6 charts

Facebook continues to make a ton of money…

… but for months, Facebook execs have warned that its advertising revenue growth will slow down in 2017 as it stops squeezing more ads into the average news feed. But in Q1, Facebook showed no signs of slowing down just yet.

Counterbalancing Facebook’s stagnating ad load is its still-ballooning user base (most of whom use Facebook on their phones, though Facebook no longer breaks out its mobile audience numbers).

As with its audience, mobile dominates Facebook’s advertising revenue, but its desktop ad revenue continues to hold steady.

Even as Facebook maxes out the number of ads it can show the average user, it has been able to increase, year over year, the amount of money it makes per user.

With more users in total, Facebook has been able to serve more ads in total. And at the same time as its ad supply has increased, so has advertiser demand, as indicated by Facebook’s continually higher ad prices.

About The Author

Tim Peterson

Tim Peterson, Third Door Media’s Social Media Reporter, has been covering the digital marketing industry since 2011. He has reported for Advertising Age, Adweek and Direct Marketing News. A born-and-raised Angeleno who graduated from New York University, he currently lives in Los Angeles. He has broken stories on Snapchat’s ad plans, Hulu founding CEO Jason Kilar’s attempt to take on YouTube and the assemblage of Amazon’s ad-tech stack; analyzed YouTube’s programming strategy, Facebook’s ad-tech ambitions and ad blocking’s rise; and documented digital video’s biggest annual event VidCon, BuzzFeed’s branded video production process and Snapchat Discover’s ad load six months after launch. He has also developed tools to monitor brands’ early adoption of live-streaming apps, compare Yahoo’s and Google’s search designs and examine the NFL’s YouTube and Facebook video strategies.