Facebook’s ongoing shift to mobile and its recent video drive were the highlights in another quarter of growth for the company, as CEO Mark Zuckerberg proclaimed “we have a lot more work to do”.

Its Q2 earnings afforded Facebook a chance to talk up its growing mobile influence, with Sheryl Sandberg, COO, noting that for marketers mobile is “no longer a nice to do, it’s a must do”.

The company said it had 1.03 billion mobile daily active users on average during June 2016, up 22 per cent from last year.

Growth of its other mobile-orientated services also continued, with WhatsApp and Messenger now having more than 1 billion monthly active users, and Instagram passing the 500 million mark.

The surge in mobile use, which contributes more than 90 per cent of Facebook’s total user base, has inevitably had a significant impact on its top line. Mobile advertising made up 84 per cent of the company’s $6.2 billion advertising revenue in Q2, up from 76 per cent in the prior year period.

The company’s strength in attracting mobile ad spend comes as competitors continue to struggle. While Twitter showed slow user growth yesterday, Yahoo, once a big platform for marketers, was bought this week by US operator Verizon.

In total, the company reported its net income more than doubled year-on-year, reporting $2 billion profit, up from $719 million last year, on revenue which increased 59 per cent to $6.4 billion.

Video drive
In the statement, Zuckerberg said the company “was particularly pleased with our progress in video”, adding that it was moving “towards a world where it is at the heart of all our services”.

This quarter saw the company launch Facebook Live video service, which is proving popular with users, while video as a whole is contributing positively to how long users spent on the platform, as well as advertising spend.

“The best marketers understand that people watch video differently in mobile feeds,” added Sheryl Sandberg, COO at the company. “The goal is to create what we think of as thumb-stopping creative, videos that grab attention in the first few seconds even without sound.”