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Facebook Draws More Mobile Advertising

RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:

Facebook posted its earnings yesterday, and the results were good, so good that Mark Zuckerberg's net worth shot up more than $1.8 billion in just under an hour. Hmm.

NPR's Steve Henn has more on where Facebook is winning.

STEVE HENN, BYLINE: Concerns about Facebook's ability to compete on mobile devices pushed down the social network's stock price immediately after its IPO last year.

MARK ZUCKERBERG: We weren't happy with the quality of our mobile experiences - rewinding 18 months - so we had just a lot of foundational work to do.

HENN: Yesterday, during a conference call for inventors, Mark Zuckerberg said that work was paying off. Facebook recorded $333 million in profits the past quarter. But even more impressive was the growth in Facebook's mobile business.

SHERYL SANDBERG: Obviously, the transition to mobile was a really big one.

HENN: Sheryl Sandberg.

SANDBERG: We had almost no mobile ads a year ago. We're up to 41 percent this quarter.

HENN: While other companies, including Google, have struggled to create effective mobile ads, Clark Fredricksen at eMarketer says Facebook is thriving.

CLARK FREDRICKSEN: So for Facebook to come out and say, not only have we seen more people click on our ads, but we've actually been able to increase pricing for our ads and, oh, by the way, we're making more money from mobile advertising than ever before, is outstanding.

HENN: While both Google and Yahoo disappointed inventors last quarter, Facebook's results blew away expectations. The company nearly doubled its mobile revenue in just three months.

Steve Henn, NPR News, Silicon Valley. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.

Steve Henn is NPR's technology correspondent based in Menlo Park, California, who is currently on assignment with Planet Money. An award winning journalist, he now covers the intersection of technology and modern life - exploring how digital innovations are changing the way we interact with people we love, the institutions we depend on and the world around us. In 2012 he came frighteningly close to crashing one of the first Tesla sedans ever made. He has taken a ride in a self-driving car, and flown a drone around Stanford's campus with a legal expert on privacy and robotics.