Earnings Labs

Meta Platforms, Inc. (META)

Q1 2014 Earnings Call· Wed, Apr 23, 2014

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Operator: Good afternoon. My name is Jake and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Facebook First Quarter Earnings Conference Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speakers' remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] Thank you very much. Ms. Deborah Crawford, Facebook's Director of Investor Relations, you may begin.

Deborah Crawford

Analyst · Deutsche Bank. Your line is open. Ross Sandler, your line is open

Thank you. Good afternoon and welcome to Facebook’s first quarter earnings conference call. Joining me today to talk about our results are Mark Zuckerberg, CEO, Sheryl Sandberg, COO and David Ebersman, CFO. Before we get started, I would like to take this opportunity to remind you that our remarks today will include forward-looking statements, and actual results may differ materially from those contemplated by these forward-looking statements. Factors that could cause these results to differ materially are set forth in today’s press release and our annual report on form 10-K filed with the SEC. Any forward-looking statements that we make on this call are based on assumptions as of today and we undertake no obligation to update these statements as a result of new information or future events. During this call we will present both GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures. A reconciliation of GAAP to Non-GAAP measures is included in today’s earnings press release. The press release and an accompanying investor presentation are available on our website at investor.fb.com. And now, I’d like to turn the call over to Mark.

Mark Zuckerberg

Analyst · Sanford Bernstein. Your line is open

Thanks Deborah, and thanks everyone for joining today. This was a very busy quarter and a strong start to 2014. We continued to grow our community in size and engagement, with nearly 1.28 billion people now using Facebook each month and almost 63% visiting daily. We also reached new milestones as a mobile company, with more than one billion monthly actives on mobile and almost 55% of our daily actives only connecting on mobile. When you look at our business performance, we’ve also made some good progress. Our total revenue grew 72% year-over-year. Our advertising grew 82%, our strongest annual growth rate in nearly three years. And mobile accounted for 59% of our advertising revenue. These results show Facebook’s business is strong and growing, and we’re in a great position to continue making progress towards our mission. This quarter we made a number of big investments in our future. We reached agreements to acquire WhatsApp and Oculus, and we announced our new Connectivity Lab that’s focused on developing technologies to expand Internet access around the world. These are important efforts that we believe will help us continue making progress towards our mission over the long term. But as this quarter shows, we’re also staying focused on execution, and carefully improving our core products and business. Execution gives us the strength to bet on the future, and our success over the long term depends on us serving our community today and delivering against our current strategy. So, with that in mind, I’d like to run through our progress this quarter towards our three big company goals; connecting everyone, understanding the world and building the knowledge economy. Connecting everyone is about making Internet services available to everyone in the world, and allowing everyone to connect with the people and things that they…

Sheryl Sandberg

Analyst · Goldman Sachs. Your line is open

Thanks Mark and hi everyone. Before I start, I want to join Mark in thanking David for being an extraordinary partner and friend over these past five years. As Mark said, he has contributed so much to our company and I've learned so much, personally, working with him. Great people build great teams and that's what David has done. And so I’m also really excited to continue working with Dave Wehner as he steps into his new role as our CFO. We are off to an outstanding start in 2014. Our total revenues were up 72% year-over-year and our advertising revenue growth accelerated to 82%. That’s our strongest year-over-year advertising growth rate in nearly three years. We’re really pleased with these results and the level of execution in our business. The team is staying focused on each element of our monetization strategy: capitalizing on the shift to mobile, growing the number of marketers who advertise with us, and investing in our ad products. Mobile continues to be a big driver for us – and a big opportunity. Mobile comprised 59% of our ad revenue in the quarter, up six percentage points from Q4. We continue to believe that this is because Facebook has the best mobile ad product in the market. We also continue to grow the number of marketers using Facebook and saw growth from existing advertisers as well. Our growth is very broad-based and coming from all types of marketers, with particular strength from SMB and direct response. We saw strong performance this quarter from verticals such as mobile gaming, e-commerce, and consumer-packaged goods. I am especially pleased with what we are seeing and hearing from clients around the world as they shift budgets to online, to mobile, and to Facebook. One recent powerful example is Sport Chek,…

David Ebersman

Analyst · JPMorgan. Your line is open

Thanks Sheryl and good afternoon everyone. Before I dive into the numbers, I wanted to say a few words about my decision to step down as CFO. This was a hard decision for me because of how much I love Facebook and all the people I work with here. In particular, I can’t thank Mark and Sheryl enough for their friendship and support and for letting me be a part of their team. I’m confident that Facebook’s best days lie ahead and I’m excited about the path Mark and Sheryl are leading the company on. My decision’s a personal one based on my desire to get back into health care where I spent my entire career before Facebook. And, after ten years as a CFO, half of them here, I’m ready for a different role and challenge. Right now feels like a good time for this change. The business is doing well, the foundation is solid, and in Dave Wehner we have a terrific successor who’s up to speed and ready to go. I have complete confidence in Dave and the rest of the Finance team. Dave will formally take over me in June and he’ll take my place on the next earnings call, though I plan to stay with the company through September to ensure a smooth transition. I also want to thank our shareholders for your partnership and support. Now to the quarter. Q1 was a strong quarter for us across the business. We increased our revenue growth rate, expanded operating margins, delivered free cash flow of over $900 million, and continued to make investments to position the company for near-term and long-term growth. Let’s start with some people metrics. The number of people using Facebook on an average day in March grew to 802 million, up 137…

Operator

Operator

We will now open the line for a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from the line of Heather Bellini with Goldman Sachs. Your line is open.

Heather Bellini - Goldman Sachs

Analyst · Goldman Sachs. Your line is open

Great. Thank you very much. I was just wondering, Mark or Sheryl, if you can share with us your vision of payments for Facebook, and how the Company might be able to play a role in reducing the friction that exists today when users are trying to engage in mobile e-commerce. And then the follow-up question was just going to be if you could share with us what inning do you think we are in, in terms of improving the relevancy of the ads that you are showing? Thank you.

Sheryl Sandberg

Analyst · Goldman Sachs. Your line is open

On payments, our payments business has been important in supporting some of the developer activity on Facebook, primarily games. So we continue to be interested in that. I guess really important to know that, our advertising business is very relevant for e-commerce and that doesn't depend on taking payments and it doesn't depend on a payment strategy because we provide a really great opportunity for marketers to find customers who are then going to go ahead and buy their products both online and offline. In terms of relevance, I think we are in really early innings. I think people can see it from their own experience. Those people I talk to and certainly the data we have across the base of people use Facebook suggest that the ads are getting more relevant, but there is a long way to go. Our goal is that every time you open newsfeed, every time you look at Facebook, you see something whether it's from consumers, or whether it's from marketers, that really delights you, that you're genuinely happy to see. I think we hit that more than we used to with our ads, but I think the truth is we still have a long way to go to hit that bar and that's the bar we are striving for.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from Douglas Anmuth with JPMorgan. Your line is open.

Douglas Anmuth - JPMorgan

Analyst · JPMorgan. Your line is open

Great. Thanks for taking the question. David, just wanted to ask you a little bit more about margins, in particular. If we look at this quarter, it looks like the incremental margins here are 78% or so. So, I was hoping you could drill down a little more just on the drivers within cost of revenues and how you are thinking about the sustainability of that going forward. And is the 40% to 45% growth that you mentioned in non-GAAP OpEx, is that taking into account the acquisitions at all? Just thinking about how you can get to that level of spend given what you are starting the year. Thanks

David Ebersman

Analyst · JPMorgan. Your line is open

Yeah. Thanks for the question Doug. I think Q1 is traditionally a light spending quarter for us because we budget with an annual cycle and often it takes some time to sort of ramp up the new program. So I don't think it's surprising that Q1 year-over-year increase would come in a little lighter than we expect for the full year. Additionally there were some one-time things that benefited the quarter, that kept expenses down particularly in cost of revenue as we continue to exit lease data centers and sort of amend our supply chain. I think that going forward our expectation was and remains the 40% to 45% growth excluding the impact from the acquisitions. So, we will update that guidance once the integration plans are clearer and have a better sense for what those spend patterns will look like. In general in terms of margins, the comments I would make are that, we don’t have a quarter-to-quarter target margin that we're managing closely to. To do so, would require varying our spend patterns as revenue changes up and down over time. And I think that's the wrong way to focus on how you spend your money in the company. Our priority is really to try and make investments that are high quality that drive the creation of value and makes the business better. And since many of those investments take a longer period to mature, we want to be able to think about our spend increases over a longer term horizon. And as you can see looking back at the last couple of years and then our plans for this year, there has been a pretty steady rate at which we've been growing spend particularly in R&D and marketing and sales where we really want to focus on making sure we're growing smartly and thoughtfully at a rate we can manage wisely and doesn't get ahead of our ability to manage it. On cost of revenue and G&A what you can see in the Q1 numbers is the fruits of a lot of labor trying to manage those parts of the business really efficiently and free up resources to invest elsewhere. So, I think we've always believed that Facebook has the opportunity to be a sustainably high margin business and we continue to believe that, noting that there were some individual items that helped us in Q1.

Operator

Operator

The next question comes from Carlos Kirjner with Sanford Bernstein. Your line is open.

Carlos Kirjner - Sanford Bernstein

Analyst · Sanford Bernstein. Your line is open

I think for Mark, how do you think about the evolution of browser technology, HTML5, and development tools versus native apps? If you look two to three years out, do you think native apps could finally become less important for many use cases? Or, in other words, maybe you guys were not wrong when you tried HTML5, you were just too early. Thank you.

Mark Zuckerberg

Analyst · Sanford Bernstein. Your line is open

Yeah, well timing matters a lot and so, I do think that there's nothing wrong with the standard of HTML5 technically. I think a lot of what we see is what the main platform providers want to push as the standard for developing on their own platforms. And what we've seen is that both Apple and Google have really favored and made it easier to build high quality experiences in their own proprietary formats rather than the open web format. So, while our bias for a number of reasons would have been to have really pushed on HTML5 and I don't want to sound like we've walked away from this because a large number of people access Facebook from the mobile web and I don't know if we break that out specifically but it's quite a large number of people. So, we're continuing to develop that, but for the foreseeable future, we see the best path to continuing to deliver great experiences by working on the native app experiences that we have now.

Operator

Operator

The next question comes from Eric Sheridan with UBS. Your line is open.

Eric Sheridan - UBS

Analyst · UBS. Your line is open

Thanks for taking the questions. Congratulations, David, on your future endeavors, as well. Mark, maybe a quick question for you about the way in which you think Facebook, and the various applications Facebook is developing also, move towards a communication ecosystem longer term. A big picture question on where the various applications go, the ones that are in the process of being acquired and the ones you are developing organically. And then second question, to use the baseball analogy again, as you continue to take ad impressions out of the Facebook platform, wonder if we should think about where you get to longer term on a level of ad impressions that you think are the perfect mix for balancing engagement and monetization, and what inning we are in that process.

Mark Zuckerberg

Analyst · UBS. Your line is open

Sure. I think I can probably take both of those. So in terms of building out a whole communication ecosystem, the way that we think about the new apps and products that we're building is that people want to share all kinds of different content with all kinds of different audiences. Right so, sometimes you want to have one-on-one conversation or text or chat or voice call up to having a small group conversation to communicating, updating all your friends and something at once. And sometimes there is really good public content, whether it’s news or premium video or things like that. At the intersection of each type of content and each audience, we think that there is a really compelling experience to be built. And Facebook historically is focused on friends and public content, now with Messenger and WhatsApp we're taking a couple of different approaches towards more private content as well. You're going to see us do more things in more private content I think, I don’t know that’s an ecosystem that's growing incredibly quickly and also that speaks to why WhatsApp and Messenger are both growing independently quickly is because they actually serve pretty different used cases within private sharing and private content. In terms of our investments, I think you want to look at it, I kind of outline this in my remarks, but I think it's important enough to say again. There are different stages of maturity for the different things that we're doing. So, the Facebook app by itself is the furthest along and more than a billion people use it and it's not only one of the most used apps, but it's the most used app it's also at the core of our business. Then the second set of apps that we have…

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from Peter Stabler with Wells Fargo. Your line is open.

Peter Stabler - Wells Fargo

Analyst · Wells Fargo. Your line is open

Good afternoon. Thanks for taking my question. I wanted to ask a question about engagement. By one measure, DAU over MAU, it's at an all-time high. But no doubt you always have a body of last users. I'm wondering if you could share any color on what types of algorithm or product tweaks that you've made have yielded the most return or the greatest return in terms of re-engaging last users. And then, secondly, just quickly, any color you could provide on your estimate of the overlap of Instagram and Facebook users, perhaps based on the linking of those accounts. Thank you very much.

Mark Zuckerberg

Analyst · Wells Fargo. Your line is open

Unfortunately, I don’t think I'm going to have much color on either of those. We are constantly doing things to make it so that people can share the content that they want, that they have the tools, that the new network showing them most relevant content to people. That is always going to be the way that people will use the service not through some kind of trick or something that we're using to reengage people. One stat that I think is pretty interesting is that, you would expect naturally that as our -- the community continues to grow and we're getting into later and later adapters, that the percent of people who are using Facebook or use it every day would decrease. And I have actually predicted for a long time, that eventually that would flatten out and I thought it would decrease but actually it continues to increase much to our surprise and joys. And you know now this quarter I think, we're add almost 63% of people who use Facebook in a month will use it in a given day. And I think another stat, I think is actually quite interesting, is we tracked how many people use Facebook not just every day. So I mean one day out of -- so what percent of our monthly folks use it today. But what percent of people used it six out of seven days of the week. And that number for the first time in the last quarter passed 50%. So I mean that's pretty crazy if you think about is that, you have this really big engaged community and not only are almost 63% of people touching it in a given day and using the service because it's really engaging content, but we've gone to a period where more than 50% of people have used it six out of seven a week, almost every single day of a week. That just speaks to I think - just the underlying kind of fundamental strength in the content and the work that we're doing just surface the best content of best people.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from Ben Schachter with Macquarie. Your line is open.

Ben Schachter - Macquarie

Analyst · Macquarie. Your line is open

First, David, let me add my congratulations on your success. And good luck with the future role. Mark, beyond games, do you see other categories of apps that are ramping? And do you need to see that or can games continue to be the primary driver of app install and app engagement ads? And then, separately, on Graph Search, do you see the potential for more partnerships for Graph Search in terms of additional data sets and distributions partners? Or is this more go-it-along? And then, finally, maybe for Sheryl or David, can you just give us a sense on pricing trends on app install ads? Thanks.

Mark Zuckerberg

Analyst · Macquarie. Your line is open

Yes, I mean on app-installs, I actually think we see more diversity in the customers and developers on mobile now then we saw on desktop with Canvas. So Canvas the business was almost entirely games that is now -- we see that a lot of these games, but a lot of it is other kind of folks because I mean everyone who is building apps on mobile needs installs and we have the number one products out there for delivering that. So, we see that happening and we feel pretty good about that.

Sheryl Sandberg

Analyst · Macquarie. Your line is open

On pricing, we don't break our pricing by type of ad, but overall in the ecosystem, our prices are up as Mark said, the effective price per ad shown is driven up by more ads and newsfeed, and that's because newsfeed ads have significantly higher engagement and click-through rates.

Operator

Operator

The next question comes from Evan Wilson with Pacific Crest. Your line is open.

Evan Wilson - Pacific Crest

Analyst · Pacific Crest. Your line is open

Hi, thanks for the question. Just a small item. It looks like the Asia engagement metric, the MAU, was down sequentially, slightly. Was there something there that impacted that in Q1 or was there something competitive there you think might be impacting that part of the business, like the big mobile messaging services? Thanks.

David Ebersman

Analyst · Pacific Crest. Your line is open

I don't know that I would read anything into that yet. We haven't identified that as a trend that we're focused on at this point. The number is $2 bucks around a little bit from quarter-to-quarter in various regions.

Operator

Operator

The next question comes from Anthony DiClemente with Nomura. Your line is open.

Anthony DiClemente - Nomura

Analyst · Nomura. Your line is open

Congratulations, David. And best of luck in your new endeavors, as well. One question for David and one for Sheryl. David, I just wondered if you could talk about your mix of impressions in terms of brand versus direct response. How has that changed this quarter versus prior quarters? And what else can be said about that split? And then, secondly, for Sheryl, just wondered if you could give us a little more of an update on premium video ads. Specifically, I'm curious as to how those are sold. Are they sold on an impression basis or on a performance basis, or some hybrid of the two? And then I know you don't give pricing by property, but is there a way to think about the premium or premium multiple of price that premium video ads would go for as compared to core News Feed ads? Thanks for any color on that.

David Ebersman

Analyst · Nomura. Your line is open

Thanks Anthony, I'm happy to take the first part of the question. I think in the first quarter we delivered strong performance across all the advertiser segments that we focus on. And so I think they are all growing nicely. We don't have a perfect measure for what kind of demand is, brand versus DR per say, because someone doesn't have to input that into the system when they come in. We've lots of things we do to try and find surrogates for that and are happy to see using some of that data, we're seeing nice growth across the various segments.

Sheryl Sandberg

Analyst · Nomura. Your line is open

On video ads, video represents a really big opportunity, really driven by consumer behavior. Smartphones are going better and faster and more people have phones that can provide a great video experience. So we're seeing consumers do a lot more in video. There's also a lot more video going through newsfeed that consumers are putting in and that creates an opportunity for us, both on the consumer side and the ad side. We have our current product in the market, it's a click to play video ad, it's part of the page post, you can post the video. Those are so both CPM and CPC and those are going really well and I think explains some of the growth we are seeing in our ads business. We also have been in early conversations with some clients about what would be a CPM autoplay video ad and in terms of the expectations for that, we really want to see autoplay video ads be something that's pretty common in the newsfeed experience based on consumer usage before we push very hard in the ads business. So we remain, long term very excited, we do expect that product, demand to premium product but as I said in my remarks, we won't see a material contribution from it this year.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from Mark Mahaney with RBC. Your line is open

Mark Mahaney - RBC Capital Markets

Analyst · RBC. Your line is open

On those autoplay videos, as an average Facebook user, I've noticed them more and more in my News Feed, and I think they're really neat. I think all my friends love watching videos of my kids play basketball. The question I'd have for you is what have you seen internally in terms of engagement. I assume that since I'm seeing more, other people are too, and that users like having them in. But is there any way you could quantify or maybe talk broadly about the impact that's having on usage? Thank you.

Sheryl Sandberg

Analyst · RBC. Your line is open

Our goal is to make newsfeed as engaging as possible and I think if you look at the engagement we have on mobile, we're getting 20% of mobile time on Facebook in the U.S. and growing globally as well. I think you see with that engagements grade, I'm sure your friends love seeing your kids play basketball. I think they probably like to see more of those. And when and if we deliver a really great ad experience and ads that you love, something you're interested in, I think you're going to like that just as much, we look forward to the growth.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from Justin Post with Merrill Lynch. Your line is open.

Justin Post - BofA Merrill Lynch

Analyst · Merrill Lynch. Your line is open

Great. I have a couple questions. On the app installs, can you help us at all understand what -- I know you gave us the number of total apps, but maybe how that revenue as a percentage of total, how important it is to you? And then there's a lot of competitors targeting that market with new products. Maybe you could outline some of Facebook's competitive advantages in that market. And then one for Dave. We will miss you. Maybe you could talk a little bit about maybe some things Facebook could do to offset some of the dilution from the acquisitions, if anything. Thank you.

Sheryl Sandberg

Analyst · Merrill Lynch. Your line is open

On mobile app ads, we've seen really strong adoption and this is a very nascent but growing market. I think people sometimes think that a lot of our mobile ad revenue is coming from this one type of ad and our mobile ad revenue is very broad based. We know you're seeing in newsfeed and what we see are ads from brand marketer's direct response, SMB's end developers and so we're pretty distributed there and pretty happy about that. I think it's not surprising that other people are entering states, it's obviously growing, it's one that performs well. I think we continue to be excited by the results we're seeing for our marketers and developers. The results we are seeing from consumers and we think the fact that we've already been investing and learning and growing, puts us in a great position to continue to have a very strong product offering even in a more competitive space.

David Ebersman

Analyst · Merrill Lynch. Your line is open

So, Justin on the -- the acquisition is the most important thing we'll do to truly I would say justify, the delusion will be to make those acquisitions successful and over time ensure that the unique assists that we're buying contribute to Facebook success and to our cash flows over time. This business is obviously in really healthy shape right now in terms of the cash it's generating and we look forward at the moment to really continuing to prioritize where it's appropriate, investing that in the business to drive future growth.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from Youssef Squali with Cantor Fitzgerald. Your line is open.

Youssef Squali - Cantor Fitzgerald

Analyst · Cantor Fitzgerald. Your line is open

Thank you very much. So firstly David, can you talk a little bit about the ad load during the quarter? We saw noticeable increases here in the holidays and through Q1 versus that 5% or 6% you mentioned back on the Q3 call. Is the new ad load we are seeing sustainable, do you think, going forward? And, second, maybe Mark or Sheryl, can you just talk a little bit about timing for monetization of Instagram? Are there any thresholds, either in terms of users, user engagement, whatnot, before you can ramp that advertising, or advertise on that platform? I think, David, you were talking earlier about maybe reaching a billion, but I think that was a general comment. Thanks.

David Ebersman

Analyst · Cantor Fitzgerald. Your line is open

Yeah, thanks Youssef. So as Mark sort of alluded to earlier as it relates to ad load, what we're trying to do is optimize across multiple variables that really produce the best experience for people who use the network and help us to grow the business. And ad load is one of the variables that we look at. And of course we also look at things like the size of the ad, the prominence of the ads and of course the quality of the ads. And what we're trying to do is to continually really tweak all of those variables and then measure what impacts we're having on engagements, on feedback from people, on revenue and trying to optimize using that data and the changes that we've made. And I think the story there is a really good one. Things continue to go very well obviously in terms of revenue what you see, but also in terms of engagement, in terms of feedback we get from people when we survey them. So we think we remain in a really very strong position in that way. Actually we'd not validate the assertion that you gave that the ad load increased dramatically in the timeframe you described since that's not consistent in aggregate with our data. What I can say is that, every person who uses Facebook has their own experience and the experience including the ad experience is personalized based on the other content we have available based on how much they've engaged with ads we've shown in the past etcetera. So, ideally we'd like to personalize not just the organic content that you see, but also your ad experience in a way that's really optimized for you and your interests.

Sheryl Sandberg

Analyst · Cantor Fitzgerald. Your line is open

On Instagram, Instagram is a great product. I think that's why we see so much engagement from people who are using it and the gross passing 200 million. It's also a great advertising product and there's just tons of demand because you know, the picture themselves are so visually appealing and also there's so much consumer engagement. We're in really early days, we've seen some great results, just to mention one, Levi's is running an ad, which is basically pictures of people wearing denim in really beautiful outdoor spaces. They targeted people 18 to 34 in United States. Reached over seven million people and importantly they drove a 24%-- 24 point left in ad recall which was three times the control group. So, I think that shows that just as people engage with consumer pictures on Instagram, they're going to engaged with the right pictures from marketers. That said, we're very focused on consumer growth and we move slowly and deliberately in monetization. So, we don't see the need or the urge to ramp this as quickly as we possibly could but really want to grow it slowly, grow it deliberately and continue the growth on the consumer side and a great returns for marketers.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from Colin Sebastian with Robert Baird. Your line is open.

Colin Sebastian - Robert Baird

Analyst · Robert Baird. Your line is open

Thanks, I appreciate the chance to ask two questions. The first one is, I wonder if there's any way we can generalize or correlate around the growth in mobile monetization with the shift to 4G LTE, and whether this could be a driver, as well, of improving monetization internationally, as those higher-speed networks are deployed in new markets. And then, secondly, regarding Nearby Friends, just wondering how you plan to tie that feature and data set into more of a commercialized local offering for businesses, whether that's geo targeting or other related services. Thank you.

Mark Zuckerberg

Analyst · Robert Baird. Your line is open

Well, a lot of what we're trying to do with internet.org is making so that everyone has the cellular networks that they need to be able to get on the Internet and access basic services, which we think are text-based communication services, whether it's things like social networks or messaging or email or search, whether stock prices,-- like basic stuff like that, that people will use on a day-to-day basis, but don't require huge amount of data. We're pretty happy with the early progress that we've made. We have a multi-year initiative to work with operators around the world to roll-out a program where folks can have free basic services. And as I mentioned before, a lot of the initial work is the initial partnerships were in the Philippines and Paraguay. And what we're really pleased with, even just a few months of work, we were able to help almost three million people get access to data for the first time. So, there is no doubt that going from having no access to data to having some access is a huge jump in terms of the activity on the business that we see -- that's available from people. Moving towards things like LTE later on in the funnel, will be helpful as we move towards richer types of contents like higher resolution photos and videos. so that will be important especially as the mix of content that people share moves towards the richer media. But we're really focused on both and we have a huge investment as well and the internet.org starting just making sure that everyone in the world gets connected.

Sheryl Sandberg

Analyst · Robert Baird. Your line is open

And Nearby Friends, it's a great new features, is an optional feature we just rolled out last week, I don't know if, people have had a chance to try it yet. But, rolling out slowly, but it’s a great product experience one we're excited to be able to offer. We use the information like this to enhance all the services we provide, and make things more relevant including relevant ads.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from Brian Wieser with Pivotal Research. Your line is open.

Brian Wieser - Pivotal Research

Analyst · Pivotal Research. Your line is open

Hi. Thanks for taking the questions. First of all, I was wondering, with regard to the WhatsApp acquisition, I was wondering if you could update us on the status, if the current situation with Russia poses any issues given the development team space there. And then, separately, I was wondering if you could talk Nielsen and the use of OCR with respect to advertisers' interest in using OCR tools. Do you find that that's making a difference at the present time in terms of brands spending money with you, in general?

Sheryl Sandberg

Analyst · Pivotal Research. Your line is open

On the first, yeah, the development team is located in Mountain View not in Russia. So…

Brian Wieser - Pivotal Research

Analyst · Pivotal Research. Your line is open

And they are doing extremely well.

Sheryl Sandberg

Analyst · Pivotal Research. Your line is open

Yes, they're doing really well.

Mark Zuckerberg

Analyst · Pivotal Research. Your line is open

The deal has been closed. We don't have anything to share. But I just would just point you to a blog post that Jan wrote. I think it was yesterday announcing that they just help to connect 0.5 billion monthly asset. We're growing very quickly. So I think that's up to about 460 million monthly is just a couple of months ago when we announced the deal was done in the first place.

David Ebersman

Analyst · Pivotal Research. Your line is open

And I think that Jan specifically called out a few countries including Russia and Brazil and I think India is some of the fastest growing markets for WhatsApp. So I'd just direct you that statement and you should read that for more information on how they're doing and we'll update you more when the deal closes.

Sheryl Sandberg

Analyst · Pivotal Research. Your line is open

And Nielsen OCR anything that helps advertisers measure their spend is really important. I've talked on the call a bunch about how measuring online and in-store sales really matters. It also matters to marketers to be able to measure their spend compared to other investments they can make. And what OCR has done, it's given advertisers and marketers comparability between TV and digital and our spend. I think in those comparisons we do very well. And I think that is part of the shift that’s happening and its part of why we see growing interest from clients.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from Ross Sandler with Deutsche Bank. Your line is open. Ross Sandler, your line is open.

Ross Sandler - Deutsche Bank

Analyst · Deutsche Bank. Your line is open. Ross Sandler, your line is open

Good afternoon. Can you guys hear me now? Okay, Just two quick questions. Facebook's on pace to represent around 20% of global display advertising or non search advertising in 2014. Do you view that as your addressable market? And, if so, what do you see as the potential market share you guys can capture relative to the -- I think, Sheryl, you said it is 23% mobile consumption, ex-China, globally today. And then the second question is, there's been some press recently that Facebook is looking at building peer-to-peer money transfer services. Is that a market that you view as an opportunity? Would that fit into Messenger or potentially a standalone app?

Sheryl Sandberg

Analyst · Deutsche Bank. Your line is open. Ross Sandler, your line is open

We had our payments business for a while and we continue to have one and nothing new to apps there. On the first question, I think our adjustable market is much bigger than digital and you see that in the trends. The big trend that’s happening is the shift from consumer time. So last year was the very first time those lines crossed and consumers spent more time in digital, which is mobile and desktop than they did on TV. That continues to grow, so where we are right now is, the average U.S. consumer as an example spent 4.5 hours per day on TV but five and three quarter on digital and that’s largely been driven by mobile. That means that as consumer time and attention shifts, we think ad budget shift as well particularly if you have good mobile ad products and you can measure results. So we definitely believe there will be and continuous to be a shift happening. I talked about a print shift happening with that example of Sport Chek in Canada. But we see this across the board that marketers are looking for the highest ROI they can find and they should be comparing us and everyone else across and they do that not just across digital but across print, across radio, across TV, across any other vehicle they can. I think our investments and measurement really pay-off here. We say to our clients all around the world, we want to earn your business because we want to be the best dollar and the best minute you send because both their dollars and their time are so valuable. And we want them to compare us to the other investments that could make to see who can drive the most value to the bottom line and that's what we are focused on and that goes way beyond digital.

Deborah Crawford

Analyst · Deutsche Bank. Your line is open. Ross Sandler, your line is open

I think we have time for one last question.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from John Blackledge with Cowen & Company. Your line is open. John Blackledge - Cowen & Company: Great. Thanks for the questions. Just wondered if you could discuss how Facebook's potential mobile ad network would provide additional value to advertisers than other existing mobile ad networks. And then just a second question for David. I don't know if you could help quantify what meaningfully lower year-over-year ad revenue growth is, or just give us a sense of how to think about it for modeling purposes. Thank you.

Sheryl Sandberg

Analyst · Cowen & Company

On the ad network, we are in very testing for mobile ad network. We do see a big opportunity here. We think because we're people based, we have an opportunity first to provide greater reach for marketers and developers who are working with Facebook across other platforms, but also improve the relevance of the ads people see both on and off Facebook. And I think that has been our core advantage and will continue to be. That said, it's really early days and we're on the early testing phase.

David Ebersman

Analyst · Cowen & Company

Yes John, obviously the Q1 ad revenues growth here was 82% which is fantastic and a real tribute to the team and the platform. One of the things that contributed to that growth rate is the ramp up of newsfeed ads that in Q1 of last year was still really early in that part of the journey and so the comparison between the state of newsfeed ads in the Q1 we're reporting now in a year ago is meaningfully different. As you'll remember from last year, newsfeed ad really ramped up in the second quarter and revenue growth ramped up as well. So that’s just going to impact the comparisons in the subsequent quarters of the year. Having said that, there is lots of things that we're focused on, that will continue to drive our ad revenue growth including more users and critically more marketer demand. So bringing more marketers into the system, improving our products and tools to increase their returns and their ability to measure those returns and generally improving the quality and relevance and value of the ad. So those are the things that we'll stay focused on.

Deborah Crawford

Analyst · Cowen & Company

Great. Thank you for joining us today. We appreciate your time and we look forward to speaking with you again.