This week in advertising, Facebook published astonishing numbers proving the value of mobile advertising. In addition, new data show powerful growth in mobile ad spend for Instagram. Finally, B2B companies should advertise on LinkedIn and Twitter to increase customer engagement throughout the customer life cycle.

Today, Facebook is a mobile-first platform. Advertisers have taken note and have shifted their spend accordingly. As of June 2015, Facebook revenues spiked nearly two-fifths since the previous quarter. The reason for this spike? Advertisers are using Facebook mobile ads to reach consumers where they spend their time today, and according to Facebook and Comscore, US mobile users spend about one out of every five minutes on Facebook. Facebook ad sales reached $4 billion last quarter, with mobile ads responsible for over $2.9 billion of that total – a stunning 76%.

If you look at the chart below from the Financial Times, you’ll notice that near the end of 2013 mobile and desktop ad spend on Facebook switch places with mobile becoming the dominant revenue maker for the first time. That shift in revenue is astonishing and shows how advertisers treat Facebook as the mobile-first platform that it is.

Next, we want to direct your attention to mobile advertising spend overall. It’s not news that Facebook dominates the mobile ad spend category, as we cover in the previous graphic.  Additionally, based on Twitter’s earnings report last week, we know that Twitter continues to grow mobile ad revenue rapidly. However, this week eMarketer published a new look at Instagram ad revenue. 

This year, Instagram will reach $595 million in mobile ad revenues worldwide (100% of Instagram’s ads are mobile). It is estimated that by 2017, Instagram mobile ad revenue will reach $2.8 billion. This is as much as Google, and far more than Yahoo, as well as 10% of its parent company Facebook’s predicted global ad revenue. We are proud to have customers already running self-service ads through Salesforce Social.com today, and encourage advertisers to test the new Instagram advertising options, including website click ads, video ads, and mobile app install ads, all of which use the full power of Facebook’s targeting options including Custom Audiences.

For our third insight today, we’re focused on B2B advertisers specifically. Your customers are constantly scanning their social newsfeeds for great content. As an advertiser, this means you have the opportunity to connect with them both before and after they buy from you. LinkedIn is traditionally known as the best platform for engaging business decision-makers before they make a purchase. Now it is also considered a great method of engaging customers throughout the entire customer journey. As of June 2015, 91% of B2B marketing executives worldwide use LinkedIn for marketing purposes according to Regalix and cited by eMarketer. In the pre-sale process, 64% of executives deemed LinkedIn the most effective site/app for customer engagement, and in post-sale, 51% responded that LinkedIn was the most successful channel. Twitter also had an impressive response at impressive response at 47%, for pre-sale and and 42% post-sale.

For more information about the opportunities with mobile on Facebook, check out our white paper, The Facebook Advertising Mobile Opportunity.