Facebook starts selling off-site ads to target non-members

The company is already the top display ad revenue generator, with $17B in 2015

Twitter, with its stagnant user numbers, has made showing ads to non-users a top priority. It's a way to expanding reach and revenue without needing to get more people to sign up. Facebook does not have a user growth problem; with 1.65 billion MAUs, it has over a third of the entire Internet population using its site.

What about the other two-thirds, though? Can it also make money off of them? The answer, until now, was no, as ads would only be shown to those who either had Facebook, or who were logged in. That's about to change.

Facebook announced on Friday that it is expanding ads on its Audience Network to also include those who don't have a Facebook account, by tracing their cookies. 

"Today, we’re expanding Audience Network so publishers and developers can show better ads to everyone – including those who don’t use or aren’t connected to Facebook," Andrew Bosworth, VP, Ads and Business Platform at Facebook, wrote.

"Advertising may be here to stay, but bad advertising like this doesn’t have to. That’s why we’re working to provide a better online advertising experience for everyone: people, publishers, and advertisers."

The Audience Network, which debuted in April of 2014, is made up of third-party apps and websites that advertisers can use to extend the reach of their Facebook and Instagram ads. The company recently expanded the types of  video ad formats available for advertisers, allowing them to run in-stream and in-article video ads that are meant to drive brand awareness.

Facebook does not disclose the size of its Audience Network, but its partners make up over 6 percent of time spent on mobile. To put that in perspective, Twitter and Snapchat combined only make up 3 percent. In addition the number of sites and apps on the network has grown 620 percent year-over-year.

That means there's a lot of potential money to be made here, not that Facebook was hurting in that department either.  In Q1, Facebook saw revenue of $5.38 billion for the quarter, of which $5.2 billion came from advertising.  A total of 82 percent of its ad revenue came from mobile.

Facebook is already the leader in display ad revenue, according to eMarketer, with $17.8 billion in 2015, a nearly 50 percent increase year to year. It's next closest competitor was Google, with $9.07 billion.

The company is expected to grow another 31 percent in 2016, to $22.37 billion in display ad revenue, more than double Google's $10.23 billion.

Of course, Facebook knows that some people might not like this, so it also announced that it is allowing people, whether they be Facebook members or not, to opt-out of seeing its ads off the network. 

(Image source: ibtimes.co.uk)