(Reuters) -- Facebook Inc posted surprisingly strong profit and revenue growth as the world's largest social network grew even larger, with a spike in mobile users and advertising that lifted its stock to an all-time high.
The company on Wednesday reported audience numbers that suggest it is poised to take on mainstream media as an advertising force, helping investors to overlook Facebook's huge spending on hiring and building data centers.
And Facebook's website and Instagram photo-sharing app, which opened up its platform to all advertisers in the third quarter, account for more than 1 in 5 minutes spent on mobile devices in the United States, Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg said.
Facebook had 1.55 billion monthly active users as of Sept. 30, up 14 percent from a year earlier. Of these, 1.39 billion used the service on mobile devices.
Market research firm FactSet StreetAccount had predicted 1.53 billion monthly active users, with 1.36 billion on mobile.
Ad revenue grew 45.4 percent to $4.30 billion, with 78 percent of that coming from mobile versus 66 percent in the year-ago quarter.
Facebook did not disclose Instagram's ad sales figures. But the app is expected to bring in $595 million in mobile ad revenues this year, research firm eMarketer said. Its ad revenue is projected to grow to $2.8 billion by 2017.
Net income attributable to stockholders rose to $891 million, or 31 cents per share, from $802 million, or 30 cents per share.
(Reporting by Yasmeen Abutaleb in San Francisco and Lehar Maan in Bengaluru; Editing by Sayantani Ghosh, Stephen R. Trousdale and Richard Chang)
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