For the 10th consecutive quarter, Facebook announced revenues ahead of Wall Streets estimates, largely driven by the strength of its mobile advertising and increasing numbers of mobile users.

Revenue for the fourth quarter totaled $3.85bn (£2.54bn), 93 per cent of which came from advertising. Total revenue grew 49 per cent year-on-year, while ad revenues were up 53 per cent on Q4 2013.

Mobile ad revenue made up 69 per cent of all ad revenue for Q4 (around $2.48bn), up from 53 per cent last year, and 66 per cent the previous quarter, emphasising both how mobile-first Facebook has become, and how well it has managed that transition compared to some other companies.

Facebook now boasts 890m daily users but the truly interesting user growth is happening on mobile, with 1.19bn mobile monthly users (up 6.2 per cent) and 745m daily mobile users (up 5.9 per cent), meaning that growth is actually accelerating. Mobile-only users hit 526m, up 15.3 per cent from last quarter thanks to Facebooks increasing efforts in emerging markets where mobile is the primary way of accessing the internet.

While mobile access may still be growing at an ever-increasing rate, many commentators are already pointing to video as Facebooks next key channel, with the Q4 results revealing that 3bn videos are viewed on the site each day, and over 50 per cent of US daily users watching at least one video a day.

Facebooks advertising and measurement tools are one of the keys to its revenue growth, with average advertising revenue per user up 18 per cent quarter-on-quarter as the company refines its ad platform to increase ROI. The results were especially impressive in the US and Canada, where despite user growth of only 0.97 per cent, average ad revenue per user grew 24 per cent, to $8.26.

It was not all good news for the social network however. Despite beating expectations, revenue growth was at its slowest since the start of 2013, and spending has risen faster as Facebook invests in research projects, leading to net profits dropping to around 701,000m from 806,000m in Q3. This resulted in shares falling by around 2.6 per cent in after-hours trading.

Switching focus to the companys results for the whole of 2014, revenue for the year broke the $10bn milestone at $12.47bn, an increase of 58 per cent year-on-year, with net income at $2.94bn and $1.10 work of earnings per share, up 83 per cent on 2013.

“These milestones show our community continues to get stronger,” said Mark Zuckerberg, CEO, chairman and founder of Facebook. “But its not just our community where weve made a lot of progress. 2014 was also a year of big investments in our future. This year we made big bets on the next generation of communication and computing platforms by acquiring WhatsApp and Oculus.

“In 2015, well continue working on…developing more ways for people to share even more of the moment they care about on Facebook. Five years ago, most of the content shared on Facebook was text and some photos. Today, its primarily photos with some text and video. Over the next five years, we want to keep developing new products and features to help people share the way they want.”