The folks over at Facebook are breathing a bit easier now after the social media giant reported adjusted earnings of 12-cents-per-share on revenue of $1.26 billion in the third <a href="http://www.brandiron.net/?attachment_id=2585" rel="attachment wp-att-2585"><img class="alignright size-medium wp-image-2585" title="pic1" src="http://www.brandiron.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/pic12-300x225.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="225" /></a>quarter, exceeding analyst expectations of 11-cents-per-share earnings on $1.23 billion in revenue.

With investors watching closely to see if Facebook’s increasing mobile usage had slowed its revenue growth in the third quarter, founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg was adamant about addressing concerns regarding mobile ads, which have played a significant role in keeping down the value of its stock.

“I believe that over the long run we’re going to see more monetization for time spent on mobile than on desktop,” said Zuckerberg, pointing out that desktop ads are mostly on the right rail of the Facebook interface, while mobile ads are integrated into their experience.

With mobile ads accounting for only 14% of total ad revenue, Facebook still has a way to go, but this growth is a step in the right direction.

The reason that the shift in consumption to mobile platforms is problematic is due to the fact that mobile advertisements are only shown on users’ news-feeds, limiting the total number of engagement opportunities when compared to Facebook’s desktop platform. That being said, Facebook does generate more clicks with their mobile device ads, thus earning the company money at a substantially higher CMP, making anywhere from twenty to forty times more money per impression with mobile ads than with desktop.

The embrace of news-feed ads by American advertisers has benefitted Facebook as well, as these ads can run on both desktop and mobile and have higher click-through rates than right-rail ads. And with a rapidly expanding user base (61 million new monthly active users in just 3 months) advertisers are smart to get in on the action now.