Facebook cements status as a mobile juggernaut with $4.2 billion in ad revenue

It was only a few years ago that the tech media openly wondered whether Facebook could survive the then-nascent widespread shift from desktop computers to mobile devices.

In 2016, it seems like the better question is: can everyone else?

Facebook reported on Wednesday that it made 82% of its advertising revenue in the last three months from ads shown on mobile devices -- up from 73% in the same quarter last year.

The social network has come to dominate the mobile ads space as other media companies and advertising platforms still grapple with how to serve effective ads on small screens.

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That dominance is paying off. The company said Wednesday that it grew advertising revenue by 57% from the same quarter of last year to $5.2 billion. 

It also smashed Wall Street's expectations with $5.4 billion in total revenue compared to analyst expectations of $5.3 billion, and 77 cents per share in earnings compared to an expected 62 cents per share.

And despite its already massive user base, Facebook still found ways to sign up new people, growing the total number from 1.59 billion to 1.65 billion. The number of those who are active on mobile devices each month grew to 1.5 billion.

Notably absent from the report were revenue figures for Facebook properties Instagram and Oculus, both of which have been ramped up with new features in the past quarter.

Investors were wary about Facebook's performance in the hours leading up to the announcement after tech stocks like Apple and Twitter delivered lukewarm results. But Facebook shares immediately soared nearly 10% once the news broke.

FB data by YCharts

Facebook's supremacy in the mobile ads world is nothing new. The company's hyper-specific targeting capability, its massive user base and its emphasis on video have allowed it steadily grab up more and more of the digital advertising market in the past couple years.

"Facebook just keeps getting stronger and stronger every quarter."

The company's ads now account for about 31% of all digital ad spending in the United States, according to research firm eMarketer.

"Facebook just keeps getting stronger and stronger every quarter," eMarketer analyst Debra Aho Williamson said in an email. "Its share of digital advertising is continuing to grow, and it is steadily adding new revenue streams."

Amid a litany of new artificial intelligence and virtual reality initiatives, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced at the F8 conference earlier this month that the company would start letting advertisers develop their own chat bots within Facebook's messenger platform.

The social network is betting on the idea that automated customer service interactions will prove to be a game-changing trend in the industry in the near future.

"We're focused not on what Facebook is, but what it can be and what it needs to be," Zuckerberg said on the earnings call.

In addition to the earnings figures, Facebook proposed a new voting structure for its shareholders that would allow Zuckerberg to sell non-voting company shares to fund his philanthropic ambitions without diluting his control of the company.

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