Facebook’s app install ads have driven 350M app downloads to date

Following strong first quarter earnings for 2014, Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg revealed that the company’s mobile app install ads have led to 350 million total app installs since the feature was first introduced in June 2012.

The ads encourage people using Facebook’s mobile app to install other mobile apps. It helps Facebook cash in on one of the most profitable areas of mobile advertising: Ads touting other apps. But the huge figure also shows that Facebook has some real clout. Mobile app developers crave help like this in getting more people to install their apps.

Both Apple and Google offer similar services. On the company’s Q1 2014 earnings call, Facebook chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg addressed this:

“It’s not surprising that other people are entering the space, we continue to be excited by the results we’re seeing from merchants and the results we’re seeing from consumers.”

This figure follows news that Facebook is performing incredibly well on mobile. Facebook stated today that it now has a whopping 1.01B mobile monthly active users, up by 65M in under 4 months.