Facebook Challenges Google With Its Own Mobile Ad Network

Facebook is now delivering online advertisements directly to mobile software apps that operate outside the popular social network, a move meant to improve the relevance of ads on mobile devices and give app developers a better way of making money.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Photo Jim MerithewWired
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired

Facebook is now delivering online advertisements directly to mobile software apps that operate outside the popular social network, a move meant to improve the relevance of ads on mobile devices and give app developers a better way of making money.

The company has long indicated it would one day launch an online ad network akin to Google's AdSense service -- a network that delivers ads across countless third-party websites -- but this new project leapfrogs that idea to create the same kind of network on mobile devices. It's yet another challenge to Google, whose Android mobile operating system has given the company an effective means of spreading ads across smartphones and tablets.

A company spokeswoman says Facebook is working with a small group of advertisers and app developers on the project, which Facebook calls a test. This is the first time, she says, that Facebook is delivering ads directly to mobile apps, as opposed to using someone else's ad network.

>'We’ll be extending Facebook's rich targeting to improve the relevancy of the ads people see, provide even greater reach for Facebook advertisers, and help developers better monetize their apps'

Sriram Krishnan

The company declined to discuss the project further, but Sriram Krishnan, who works on Facebook's mobile and ads platform, says in a blog post that Facebook is looking to target ads on outside mobile apps in much the same way it does inside its own mobile app. "We faced some unique challenges when we first integrated ads into the Facebook mobile experience," Krishnan says, "and we believe we’re now well positioned to help other mobile apps."

In short, because it collects so much information about you and your web habits, Facebook can more effectively show you ads that you want to see, and it hopes to offer this ability to other businesses and software coders. "In this test, we’ll be extending Facebook's rich targeting to improve the relevancy of the ads people see, provide even greater reach for Facebook advertisers, and help developers better monetize their apps."

As recounted in The Facebook Effect, David Kirkpatrick's inside look at the social network's rise, a 2005 pitch to potential Facebook investors discussed something called "AdSeed," billed as "Google AdSense for social networks." The AdSeed name was never adopted, but the notion of a Facebook AdSense challenger has remained with the company ever since. It appears to be on the verge of happening, but on the mobile frontier, not the web. Zuckerberg and company were slow to embrace the mobile world and lost ground to Google and Apple, but it has in recent months been striking back.

Facebook has overhauled its own mobile app, and it has acquired Parse, a company focused on helping people build other mobile apps -- a move than not only provides Facebook with a means of selling ads to developers, but allows them to more closely track how the world uses mobile software. That, in turn, can help target ads. Because at Facebook, it all comes back to the ads.