In a very good year for the broad market indexes as a whole, social networking dynamo Facebook (META 0.43%) absolutely put the market to shame in 2013.
Much of Facebook's success this year was driven by improved performances within its budding advertising empire.
Advertising wins power Facebook
Although Facebook as a service is by no means new, it bears remembering that many aspects of Facebook's actual monetization platform, namely advertisements, are still in their infancy.
This rings particularly true in the case of Facebook's mobile advertising business. Thankfully, Facebook made tremendous strides in rapidly expanding its mobile advertising business during 2013. After being introduced in 2012, mobile ads have blossomed to represent just slightly under 50% of Facebook's total advertising revenue during its most recent quarterly report, truly an impressive feat.
Potential problems remain for Facebook investors
After such a successful year, Facebook stock certainly still suffers from one clear problem -- its valuation. Thanks to the renewed bullishness surrounding Facebook, its shares still trade at what could be generously described as an aggressive multiple.
Regardless, in this video, tech and telecom analyst Andrew Tonner looks at Facebook's epic 2013 and gives some thoughts on what to watch out for in 2014 as well.
