Facebook reportedly set to debut mobile ad network

Facebook has been wanting to do this for years, began showing ads in third party apps in January

It feels like the potential Facebook mobile ad network has been a very, very long time coming. The company has been experimenting with the idea since at least 2012. While Facebook's efforts have not worked out in the past, now, finally, after all this time, it looks like it has finally found the trick to making it succeed. 

The social network is all set to debut its mobile ad network in San Francisco at the end of this month, according to what sources told ReCode in a report on Sunday. 

The ads will likely be an extension of the experiment Facebook started in January to show Facebook ads in mobile apps. 

Facebook could already target customers who visited third-party sites with Exchange, which uses cookie tracking to let advertisers show ads related to their Web browsing when they return to Facebook. These new ads, however, would use data supplied to Facebook to run ads on other sites that are targeted to that specific user.

Details on the program were scarce at the time. There was no mention of what these ads would actually look like, or what data the company would be specifically using to target its users on third-party apps.

Perhaps that is the information that Facebook will be revealing later this month. 

As I said earlier, Facebook has been trying to make this work for a long time now and for good reason: this is a company that makes upwards of 80% of its revenue from advertising, and more than 50% of that now comes from mobile. 

Not only that, but much of its mobile advertising revenue comes from app-install ads, which do exactly what you think: suggest apps for users to install, and then redirect them to a link to buy that app if they click on it. 

Introduced in October 2012, Facebook’s Mobile App Install ads saw 245 million apps installed at the end of last year and accounted for hundreds of millions in revenue for the company. The program has been so successful that now Twitter is trying to emulate it. 

There is a ton of money to be made for Facebook by working directly with advertisers and publishers. The company already makes over $2 billion quarterly from advertising revenue. If it is able to succeed in cutting out that middle man, it could see that number go even higher. 

VatorNews has reached out to Facebook for comment on the report. The company was unavailable, and we will update if and when we learn more. 

(Image source: jana.com)