NEW DELHI: Facebook has claimed that mobile ad revenues and usage will soon outperform desktop ad revenues and usage.

In its third quarterly earnings press meet, Facebook co-founder and CEO Zuckerberg said 48 per cent of its daily active users only use mobile devices while 49 per cent of its total ad revenues come from mobile ads.

Zuckerberg said Facebook ads raked in nearly $890 million in revenues during the third quarter through the company’s app install ads, mobile engagement ads, and so on.

The announcement means the company is heading in the right direction to meet its Q2 prediction that mobile ad revenues will surpass desktop ad revenues by year-end.

Facebook mobile MAUs gained 45 per cent more than last past year, from 604 million MAUs in Q2 2012 to 874 million MAUs in Q3 2013.

Facebook mobile MAUs include Facebook users who only use mobile devices and mobile users who occasionally use desktop devices to access Facebook services.

The 45 per cent statistic for mobile MAUs had more than twice as much growth as overall MAUs, up 18 per cent from $1.007 million in Q2 2013 to $1.189 million in Q3 2013.

Facebook remarked that its statistical figures exclude usage from Instagram-only users, but Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg delivered figures on the length of time consumers spend on Facebook’s mobile platform if combined with the photo-based social network.

Sandberg said Facebook and Instagram accounts for a combined 20 per cent of total time spent on mobile devices and 12.5 per cent of total time spent on desktop devices every month in the US.

Sandberg noted that Facebook accounts for more mobile minutes in the US than the combined minutes of YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Snapchat, Pandora, Yahoo, Tumblr, and AOL, even though comScore research results suggest it may have included Instagram data.

Facebook noted that MAUs only access the company’s services through mobile devices is at 254 million

With a total of 1.19 billion Facebook MAUs, the company grew 2.3 per cent of MAUs that only use mobile devices to access it, from 19 per cent in Q2 2013 to 21.3 per cent in Q3 2013.

According to the latest figures, Facebook mobile DAUs across the world are up by 38 million from Q2 2013, whereas MAUs are up by 55 million from the same period.