Facebook is Becoming an Advertising Giant

Facebook (NASDAQ:FB) is already the poster-child of social media, and it seems the site is becoming an advertising powerhouse as well. On February 24th, Facebook announced the milestone of achieving more than 2 million active advertisers on the site and plans for its new Ads Manager application. Ads Manager was introduced as a mobile site last summer, but Facebook hopes the additional application will make the platform more accessible for business owners who “spend less time on desktop computers and more on mobile devices,” according to Facebook’s press release. The app allows advertisers to create, edit, schedule, and track their advertisements.

Facebook’s most recent quarterly report is slightly dated from January 28th, but it still boasts impressive advertising revenue of $3.59 billion, a 53% year-over-year increase. There was a significant increase within the mobile advertising sector, which represented about 69% of the quarter’s total advertising revenue. Facebook investors are also looking forward to monetization from Instagram, the Facebook-owned photo-sharing platform, which is slowly integrating advertisements.

On March 2nd, analyst Victor Anthony of Axiom initiated coverage on Facebook with a Buy rating and a $105 price target. The analyst noted, “Facebook is the best way to play the secular shift of advertising dollars to mobile.” He continued that the overall site is in good condition, noting “User growth and engagement remains healthy, core monetization remains strong, and over the next 2 -3 years, we see multiple potential $1B revenue opportunities that should lead to upside to consensus estimates and fully offset the expense ramp in 2015.”

Victor Anthony has rated Facebook 32 times since June 2012, earning a 90% overall success rate recommending the stock with a +52.1% average return per Facebook recommendation.

Anthony has rated many websites in the past, including Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) and Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR), helping him achieve a 72% overall success rate recommending stocks with a +19.2% average return per recommendation.



He has rated Amazon 18 times since 2012, earning an 83% success rate and an +11.6% average return per Amazon recommendation. Likewise, Anthony has rated Twitter 13 times since 2013, earning a 69% overall success rate and a +8.5% average return per TWTR recommendation.



On average, the top analyst consensus for Facebook on TipRanks is Strong Buy.