Marketers and advertisers are constantly looking for new and better ways to reach their customers, and even though the Internet has vastly improved their outreach, simply putting an ad online doesn’t necessarily mean consumers will see it. In fact, over 75% of the time, search engine users won’t even go past the first page of a search engine. A company needs to know where its target demographic is spending its time online if they want to be successful in reaching that audience.
Facebook may have a solution. The social media giant recently announced that it will be launching its “Audience Network” to generate more views for its clients. The Facebook Audience Network will place ads from current Facebook advertisers on third party mobile apps outside of Facebook.
Current ads on Facebook use consumer information to target a certain demographic. This same technique will be used to put Facebook ads on apps that are relevant to the user, improving the advertiser’s chance of reaching its target audience.
But how did Facebook get these mobile apps to go along with the gig? Developers who elect to display ads from Facebook on their apps will get a cut of the revenue. By applying the targeted approach that Facebook uses now to reach consumers, mobile apps will make more than they would with other mobile ad networks. Facebook advertisers will also have to pay a premium to use the Audience Network.
The Audience Network is Facebook’s latest effort to gain a larger chunk of the digital advertising market. Facebook, unlike Google, holds a ton of demographic information on its users, giving it a leg up on the powerful search engine. Since the social media site is able to target ads based on this consumer information, it can also charge more for each ad.
“As a company, we’ve put a lot of effort into figuring out how to help developers manage the transition to mobile, and specifically the transition to mobile apps,” said Facebook’s Product Manager Sriram Kirshnan, according to Computer World
Facebook began testing its new mobile advertising tactic in January, and now the Network is available to a vast group of mobile app developers and publishers.
