Facebook Inc (FB) Earnings Call Transcript: 2014 Q3

Operator

We will know open the lines or Q&A session. To ask a question press star followed by the number 1 on your touch tone phone. Please, pick up your hand set before asking your question to assure clarity. If your streaming stays cold please mute your computer speakers. You first question comes from the line of Douglas Aims from JP Morgan’s. Your line is open.

Douglas Aims, JP Morgan

Thanks for taking the questions. Dave, just follow up on the {Unclear} you just made on alcor expenses for 2015. You just help us understand more on the non-gap expenses the 50%, the 70% and where we should be thinking about the incremental dollars being spend there primarily and then secondly, you just talk, Sheryl perhaps, about where you see in terms of branded advertising? Whether you see it more as an inflection there, more bigger brands CPT companies, Auto OAMs are coming on board and how you position there for the holidays? Thanks!

David B. Fischer, Vice President – Business and Marketing Partnerships, Facebook

Sure, Doug! I will take the first part. So, we are investing where we think there is an opportunity for long term growth and that’s going to be really investing and continue to grow the talent base of the company, so we are investing in the people and that is a big part of it and we are also investing on the product side to grow the existing product but also to invest in new areas like Oculus, WhatsApp and then the App tag initiative that Sheryl was talking about. From an infrastructure side we plan to invest to support the growth of the core business. That includes things like video. It also includes things like our global growth efforts with Internet.org so we are really kind of investing across the Board on that. I guess in summary, we got, you know, the strength of the business today is really putting us in a strong position to invest smartly in the future and we are doing that.

Sheryl K. Sandberg, Chief Operating Officer, Director, Facebook

On brand we see very strong growth about our brand marketing segment. We are really excited about the engagement we are having right now with brand marketers and agencies. We think we are the first technology platform to offer the ability to do creativity and storytelling at scale in a personal way and we talk a lot with our partners and clients about personal marketing at scale, part of clients that are on different parts of the adoption curve. We have clients who are very early on and they don’t want any products or think about their ongoing messages without including Facebook and there are some for who we are not yet core and we are working on that. With all of this, we know we need to go client by client and we are especially focused on measurement because measurement is so key for this segment.