When it comes to meeting analysts’ expectations, Facebook is no stranger to crushing the competition. There is little doubt in investors’ minds that the social networking company will crush quarter estimates again when its third quarter report is release tomorrow.

A History Of Mind Blowing Quarters

Throughout its journey in breaking into the mobile market, Facebook has repeatedly blown away analysts’ estimates. For the past four quarters, the average earnings per share are an incredible 31%. For the past seven quarters, Facebook has beaten analysts’ top line estimates as well. In its most recent quarter, it reported 72% year over year revenue growth, exceeding high above estimates of 60%.

As Facebook entered its second quarter, analysts retain their high expectations. Analysts agreed on the estimate of $2.81 billion in revenue and $0.32 in non GAAP earnings per share. The means a 68% growth and a 55% growth respectively.

Considering Facebook’s track record, it is very likely that Facebook will beat analysts’ expectations again.

However…

Facebook’s valuation is extremely aggressive and forward looking, and therefore it is necessary for it to beat these estimates in order to uphold that valuation. The stock has as ratio of 20 for price to sales. Compared to Google Inc (NASDAQ: GOOG) (GOOGL), who has a price to sales ratio of 6.5, Facebook is a growth stock like no other. This kind of high premium demands that the company outperform expectations consistently.

However, it seems that it takes more than topping estimates to impress investors. Last quarter, Facebook again came out above analysts’ estimates, but the stock still dropped for the following two days. While shares recovered and are now up 13%, the initial reaction to a great quarter shows that investors are looking for more.

Monetization Of Video Ads

One factor that investors are scrutinizing is how Facebook is handling its video ads and mobile ads.

According to Mark Mahaney, revenue from Facebook’s mobile ads accounted for 60% of its total revenue in the first quarter this fiscal year.

Mahaney also noted to keep an eye out for how Facebook would monetize video advertisements in Instagram videos, which is set to launch next year.

New Features

Additoinally, Facebook is testing out two new features – a ‘buy’ button and a ‘save’ feature.

The save feature allows users to bookmark articles, books, places, music, videos and other content on their newsfeed and in other areas of the social networking site, and return back to it at a later time. Users simply tap the bottom-right hand corner of the post, and an option menu will pop up. Users tap the save button, and the content willed be saved to the left column of the home page.

According to Facebook, the Saved Items will be organized by category, users can save it and share it on their Facebook walls. The site with also send notifications to users occasionally to remind them about their save content.

Executives in the technology space noted that this new Save feature is direct competition to services like Instapaper and Pocket, which are applications that allow users to save interesting content they find on the Web.

Over the course of the next few days, Facebook will begin integrating the Save feature into the Web and mobile devices that run on iOS and Android OS.

Check out the video on how to use the new Save feature below.

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