Facebook by the numbers: who buys ads, which games make more money

Jolie O'Dell

This morning, we’re taking a look at an infographic that breaks down some of the numbers — both money-numbers and user-numbers — behind Facebook.

With revenues of around $1.5 billion per quarter, Facebook gets most of its revenue from advertising. Ads analyst firm eMarketer said in an email that while Google continues to dominate the online ad market, Facebook is on the rise, taking home 6.5 percent of all online advertising dollars spent in the U.S. this year, up by .6 percent since last year.

Interestingly, a fair chunk of that income is derived from other web companies, such as Fab.com, Zynga, and Groupon. The most money from ads, however, comes from financial services companies like American Express.

We’ve known for a while that the developed world is pretty well saturated with Facebook users, and the company has said repeatedly that its focus on mobile is intended to reach the next billion users in less developed areas of Asia, Africa, India, and South America.

In fact, in its latest earnings report, Facebook revealed it had a grand total of 189 million “mobile-only monthly active users (MAUs)” who accessed Facebook solely through mobile apps or Facebook’s mobile website, indicating a likely lack of desktop usage.

“We want to give everyone in the world the power to share,” said Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg in the company’s quarterly earnings phone call. “The big question for us is, which areas are growing the fastest? … Whatever the form factor is going forward, we’ll be able to deliver.”

“We’ve sent a team of people around the world to see what they use, and we care about everybody, not just you guys,” Facebooker Peter Deng said to a room full of tech press and analysts in a recent chat on the company’s approach to mobile apps and the mobile web.

“Facebook really represents an opportunity to connect over 900 million people,” said engineering director Doug Purdy at the same event, “but we hope one day for it to be the entire world.”

Here’s the infographic (click for full-size version):

Facebook: Behind the Numbers
Source: Great Business Schools

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