Facebook on Wednesday reported its fourth-quarter earnings with a new metric that reiterated that the company still relies almost entirely on advertising in Facebook and Instagram to generate revenue.
For the first time ever, Facebook disclosed the average revenue per user across its monthly user base for its so-called family of apps, which includes users of the core Facebook app as well as Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp.
The new metric did not help the company's case with investors. The company's stock price fell more than 7% in after-hours trading, as investors digested a big increase in expenses in 2019.
Average revenue per person for the whole family of apps came in at $7.38 per user, while ARPU for Facebook was $8.52 for the quarter. The company said that an average of 2.89 billion people used the family of apps each month, while an average of 2.50 billion used Facebook or Facebook Messenger.
The "Facebook" metrics are confusingly named, as the company counts all revenue -- including ad revenue from Instagram -- in its revenue calculations.
In other words, the difference between the two ARPU numbers primarily comes down to WhatsApp users who do not also use the other products, and the lack of meaningful revenue from that product.'
The new family of apps ARPU metric will be a key figure for investors to keep an eye on, but the revelation is hardly surprising.
Each quarter, Facebook also breaks out how much of its revenue comes from advertising versus "other," and each quarter, advertising typically accounts for more than 98% of revenue, if not more.
Facebook has experimented with a number of ways that its other apps can contribute to revenue, but so far, it hasn't had much success. Although there is a thriving advertising ecosystem on Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp have accomplished little.
The company added its Stories features to the two messaging apps. On Messenger at least, there are ads in Stories, but it's unclear just how often people are opening that feature and looking at the ads. On WhatsApp, the company is focused on building features so businesses can communicate with users, but those efforts are still developing. The company had talked about adding ads to WhatsApp, but it recently abandoned those efforts, according to a January Wall Street Journal report.
As for Facebook's Oculus and Portal devices, the hardware products are not even counted among the company's family of apps metrics, and Facebook has never shared sales figures for either, giving little confidence that those efforts will contribute meaningfully anytime soon.
Core Facebook grows each and every quarter, but it's time for the company's other family members to start earning their keep.
Correction: This story has been updated to reflect the fact that Facebook includes Messenger users, and all sources of revenue, including Instagram advertising, in the figure "Facebook ARPU."
