Facebook responds to brand safety concerns, reports ad revenue growth

"We had a good start to 2017," said Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook founder and CEO. "We're continuing to build tools to support a strong global community."

The comments came as Facebook reported its March quarter results which saw ad revenue climb 51% compared to the same quarter last year.

First quarter 2017 operational and other financial highlights:

• Daily active users (DAUs) – DAUs were 1.28 billion on average for March 2017, an increase of 18% year-over-year.
• Monthly active users (MAUs) – MAUs were 1.94 billion as of March 31, 2017, an increase of 17% year-over-year.
• Mobile advertising revenue – Mobile advertising revenue represented approximately 85% of advertising revenue for the first quarter of 2017, up from approximately 82% of advertising revenue in the first quarter of 2016.
• Staff – Headcount was 18,770 as of March 31, 2017, an increase of 38% year-over-year.

Meanwhile Zuckerberg has responded overnight to the brand safety debate and Facebook's response:

If we're going to build a safe community, we need to respond quickly. We're working to make these videos easier to report so we can take the right action sooner – whether that's responding quickly when someone needs help or taking a post down.

Over the next year, we'll be adding 3,000 people to our community operations team around the world – on top of the 4,500 we have today – to review the millions of reports we get every week, and improve the process for doing it quickly.

These reviewers will also help us get better at removing things we don't allow on Facebook like hate speech and child exploitation.