Facebook Ad Revenue
As the leading social media marketing platform and one of the most popular social networking sites, Facebook’s ad revenues have been increasing year after year.
Coupled with the rising number of active advertisers on Facebook and the social media ad spend in the US, one of Facebook’s main markets, it should come as no surprise that its revenues from ads are in the billions.
So, just how much money does Facebook make from ads?
According to the latest financial report released by parent company Meta, Facebook’s ad revenues in 2021 hit $115 billion, crossing the $100 billion mark for the first time in history. This is nearly $31 billion more than the previous year and represents a 36.6% annual increase.
Facebook’s ad revenues have increased tremendously over the past few years, and we only have to look back at figures from the past six years to see how much.
In 2015, the social network’s total ad revenues totaled $18 billion. It increased to $27 billion in 2016 before rising further to $40 billion in 2017 and then $55 billion in 2018—effectively more than tripling its ad revenues in just three years.
From 2015 to 2021, ad revenues grew at an average annual growth rate of 36.7%. The largest year-over-year increase was registered in 2016 when Facebook’s ad revenues soared 50%. In comparison, at 20.8%, 2020 saw the smallest increase.
Facebook ad revenue breakdown
Facebook’s ad revenues make up a huge majority of its total revenues. In fact, its 2021 financial figures show that a whopping 97.5% of the $118 billion it generated came from ads.
Breaking down Facebook’s 2021 ad revenues, we see that the company performed the best in the final quarter of the year. It generated close to $33 billion in ad revenues in that quarter—20.1% more than the previous year and even beating out analysts’ expectations. In comparison, ad revenues from the first quarter were $27 billion.
Data from Facebook also shows that the majority of its ad revenues from Q4 2021 came from users in the US and Canada. They were responsible for $15 billion (nearly half) of the quarter’s total ad revenues.
Looking ahead, Facebook says it expects total revenues from the first quarter of 2022 to be $27 billion to $29 billion, an increase of between 3% and 11%, year-over-year. By extension, we can expect Facebook’s ad revenues for the quarter to also increase by a similar margin.