Join us Dec. 1-3 in Nashville for the Digiday Programmatic Marketing Summit
For years the digital media industry has predicted Facebook would eventually launch an ad network. Now, Facebook is making those predictions come true.
The company said today it will begin selling ads in third-party mobile apps to select advertisers. Facebook will target those ads using detailed information it has about millions of Web users.
A spokesperson for the social network told Digiday that the program will not port Facebook-style ad units to other apps, however. Instead, it will simply use its data to target whatever formats those app publishers currently sell.
“These will look like the ads already appearing in the apps we’re working with. For this test, they won’t be labeled as Facebook ads,” the spokesperson said.
In 2012 Facebook ran a similar test, in which it purchased mobile media from ad exchanges on behalf of advertisers. This time it’s working directly with publishers and markers, however, in a more traditional ad network model. Facebook itself will be the only middleman.
“We are working directly with a small number of advertisers and publishers rather than an outside ad-serving platform,” a Facebook blog post said.
Facebook already operates its own ad exchange, of course, through which marketers can buy ads on the site targeted on their own data. But these mobile tests are some of the first attempts by Facebook to take its proprietary data and make it useful for marketers buying ads elsewhere on the Web.
More in Media
The Verge switches up its audience team to prepare for Google Zero
The Verge has restructured its audience development team to prioritize loyal readers over traffic and page views.
Reach CEO touts Google AI deal as a template, steps up pressure on OpenAI over scraping
Digiday spoke with Reach CEO Piers North about his plans to make its Google AI content deal a blueprint framework for other LLM deals, and its recent cease-and-desist letter to OpenAI.
Social commerce edges past SEO at The Independent for the first time
The Independent’s social-commerce revenue edged past its SEO-based commerce revenue for the first time in September, CEO Christian Broughton said at Digiday’s Media Strategies event in London this week.