Facebook's Q3 ad revenue hits $2.96B, with 66% coming from mobile

Facebook brought in $2.96 billion in advertising revenue in the third quarter of this year, up from $1.8 billion in the third quarter of 2013.

The social network continues to highlight its mobile advertising revenues, which comprise 66 percent of total ad revenues. That figure is growing steadily. Last quarter the company reported mobile revenues were 62 percent of total advertising revenue.

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Facebook has been pushing mobile advertising this quarter with the launch of its new cross-platform advertising network Atlas, which it announced at the end of September. The company purchased Atlas from Microsoft last year and revamped the platform to leverage Facebook’s vast store of personal data. Analysts expect the new ad platform will help Facebook better compete against Google, which currently holds the lion’s share of the digital ad market.

In addition to Atlas, Facebook opened up its mobile ad platform, Audience Network, to all advertisers in early October. The company also unveiled local awareness ads, which will allow local businesses to target users based on proximity. The location-based ads will also enable merchants to include a call to action in the promotion.

Last quarter COO Sheryl Sandberg promised that Facebook would be sojourning further into the world of video-based advertising, largely as a result of the acquisition of LiveRail. Earlier this month, comScore noted that Facebook had surpassed YouTube in terms of video views on desktop. We’re still waiting to see what the social network can do with mobile video.