Facebook shares rise 18% on back of higher-than-expected 'mobile ad sales'

Social media giant Facebook's shares rose 18 percent as it surpassed market expectations with earnings from mobile ad sales.

According to the BBC, Facebook reported profits of 333 million dollars in the second quarter and saw 655.6million dollars in revenue from mobile ads in the three months from April to June.

Founder Mark Zuckerberg said that the work they company has done to make mobile the best Facebook experience is showing good results and provides them with a solid foundation for the future.

Chief financial officer David Ebersman said that 20 billion minutes a day were spent on Facebook in June.

Research firm eMarketer's Clark Fredricksen said that the results were incredibly impressive and exceeded expectations and added that Facebook is in a unique position with the ad market right now and is very far ahead of any other major ad platform in mobile display advertising.

eMarketer estimates that Facebook will take in more than 2billion dollars in mobile advertising this year and increase its share of the digital ad market to 5.04percent, up from 4.11percent in 2012.

The report said that Facebook has focused on perfecting its ad sales programmes and last month, it announced changes to its Ads Manager which it said would provide advertisers with better data.

Facebook has also announced that it will provide more options for users to choose from while hiding particular content from their news feed, a bid to provide users with more customized content and targeted ads.