Facebook’s Big Mobile Ad Expansion

As the opportunity for mobile advertising revenue expands, Facebook is keeping in step.

Forbes reports that yesterday (Jan. 26), the social media giant’s mobile advertising network — Facebook Audience Network — expanded from allowing advertisers to purchase ads in mobile apps outside of Facebook while still using Facebook’s ad tools to doing the same with regards to mobile websites, as well.

“There will be a huge benefit for publishers,” Facebook Vice President of Advertising Technology Brian Boland told Forbes. “The network will help advertisers get the business results they want, at the price that they want, at a greater scale … We’re excited about being a part of apps that deliver an awesome user experience, where ads are a cool part of the experience, not a necessary evil, where we’re creating value for publishers whose websites will monetize better.”

Facebook’s increase of Audience Network’s capabilities, Forbes shares, was, in large part, a response to a couple of facts sussed out by comScore: one, that media consumption on mobile devices increased about 53 percent between 2013 and 2015; and two, that roughly 90 percent of mobile device traffic for news websites comes from the mobile Web.

“Facebook is really trying to change how advertisements are delivered,” Debra Aho Williamson, a principal analyst at forecasting firm eMarketer, remarked to Forbes. “What Facebook has that other ad networks don’t have is this access to an incredible database about actual people. They can use that information to target the advertising.”

Facebook also told the outlet that the expansion of the Audience Network — which launched in 2014 and counts about 2.5 million advertisers among its ranks — will give publishers tools to quickly create native versions of advertisements (the type that accounts for approximately 80 percent of impressions on the network) from standard formats.