We recognize that by stacking engineers in strategic high tech areas we forego shorter term products’ improvement which will generate revenue more quickly. We believe these are the right decisions. As we look through our 2015 we are going to stay focused in areas that I talked about today – capitalizing on the shift to mobile, growing the number of Facebook marketers and building products that make ads more relevant. Our investments in ad tags will be an increasingly important part of all of these efforts.
Thanks everyone! And now here it is Dave.
David B. Fischer,Vice President – Business and Marketing Partnerships, Facebook
Thanks, Sheryl and good afternoon everyone! Q3 was a solid quarter across the Board. We had strong revenue grid, generated 766 Million dollars in free cash flow and continue to make investments to position our long term growth. 864 million people use Facebook on an average day in September of a 136 million from last year. This represents 64% of the 1.35 billion people that used Facebook during the month of September. Mobile continues to be the core driver of our grid. Over 1.5 billion people use Facebook on mobile during the month of September up 250 million from last year. In addition we have hundreds of millions of people on mobile using Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp.
Turning now to the financials. Total revenue in Q3 was USD 3.2 B, up 59% compared to last year, or 58% on a constant currency basis. Total ad revenue was nearly USD 3 B, up 64% compared to last year or 63% on a constant currency basis. Ad revenue growth was strong around the world but each of our four reported geographic regions growing with 50% or more compare to last year. Mobile ad revenue was approximately USD 1.9 B or 66% of ad revenue compared to approximately USD 881 M or 49% of ad revenue last year. Desktop ad revenue was up 11% compared to last year but with flat sequentially. In Q3 the average price per ad increased 274% compared to last year while total ad impressions declined 66%.
The increase in the average effective price per ad was driven primarily by the redesign of our right hand column ads which resulted in larger, more engaging ads that delivered more value to markers and thus have higher effective prices. These right hand column ads were also fewer in numbers which drove the decrease of impressions in the quarter. To a lesser degree the shift of usage to mobile where we don’t have right hand column ads also can continue to contribute to the reported price volume trends. The price volume trends were largely consistent across our four geographic regions. Total payments in other fees revenue was USD 263 M up 30% versus last year.Our payments’ volume from games which represents the substantial majority of our payments and other fees revenue declined 2% compared to last year notably for the first time and we expect this trend to continue as desktop usage continues to decline turning that to expenses.
