Facebook made a healthy profit in Q4 2017 thanks to mobile ads, despite changes which reduced the time people spent on the social media service by around 50 million hours every day.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a statement: “2017 was a strong year for Facebook, but it was also a hard one.” He stated certain changes the company made, including a decision to show fewer viral videos, meant time spent on Facebook fell by roughly 5 per cent sequentially in the fourth quarter.

In an earnings call, Zuckerberg explained “the world feels anxious and divided and that played out on Facebook.”

“We’ve seen abuse on our platform, including interference from nation states, the spread of news that is false, sensational and polarising, and debate about the utility of social media.”

“We have a responsibility to fully understand how our services are used and to do everything we can to amplify the good and prevent the harm. This is my personal challenge for 2018,” he added.

The executive noted the company doesn’t normally share time metrics because they are not the best way of understanding engagement, but said revealing the details “shows how committed we are to making sure that the time you spend on Facebook is valuable.”

Daily active users (DAU) in the US and Canada fell by 700,000, but overall DAUs grew 14 per cent year-on-year to 1.4 billion, led by growth in markets including India, Indonesia and Brazil.

Monthly active users of 2.13 billion was up 14 per cent year-over-year.

Earnings
Facebook’s Q4 profit of $4.23 billion was up 20 per cent year-on-year on revenue of $13 billion. Advertising sales contributed $12.8 billion to total revenue, with $11.4 billion of the overall ad income generated through mobile ads. The latter figure was up 57 per cent year-on-year.

COO Sheryl Sandberg explained advertisers are increasingly developing mobile-first video adverts, with “short form videos” particularly effective.

In a Q3 2017 earnings call, Zuckerberg had said the biggest trend for Facebook products over the next three years will be the growth of video.