Facebook just announced the expansion of the Audience Network from strictly apps to the mobile web. This means that Facebook’s 2.5 million advertisers can reach more people on their mobile devices.
According to the company, which cites data from comScore, digital media consumption in mobile web browsers grew 53% from 2013 to 2015 with news sites seeing 40% of their traffic from mobile devices and 93% of that from the mobile web (according to SimilarWeb).
“Until today, publishers had limited options to create rich and engaging ad experiences for the people who visit their mobile websites,” says Facebook’s Mike Murphey. “Over the past several months we’ve worked with global mobile web publishers Hearst, Elite Daily, USA Today Sports Media Group, Time Inc. and more, to test the Audience Network for mobile web in a closed beta.”
“We’re expanding into mobile web with successful native formats that make up over 80 percent of the impressions on the Audience Network today and perform up to 7x better than standard banners formats,” Murphey says. “Publishers can now leverage our fully customizable native units, and innovative formats like carousel ads that showcase multiple images to create unique ad experiences that match the look and feel of their mobile website. We’re also helping publishers create easy-to-implement native versions of standard formats, such as 300×250 medium rectangle, to improve the ads experience of every ad served from Audience Network.”
Once publishers are approved for Audience Network, they can add a JavaScript tag to their HTML page source code and start creating placements. You can check out the beta for Audience Network for Mobile Web here.
A couple months ago, Facebook released some stats on Audience Network, saying apps using it account for 6% of all mobile app time spent.
A couple of years ago, Facebook acquired ad tech company and publisher monetization platform LiveRail, but since then, Audience Network has become much more of a priority.
Facebook announced that it will no longer accept new customers for LiveRail’s ad server, and will work on helping existing customers transition to other publisher products or alternative ad servers.
This is mainly an effort to put more emphasis on its more modern Audience Network.
“Over the past two years, a growing number of mobile app publishers have found success – better returns and more relevant advertising – through Facebook’s Audience Network and the people-based marketing approach that powers it,” says Facebook’s Alvin Bowles. “We have seen the number of apps on Audience Network increase 10x YoY, and agencies and advertisers like Dentsu Aegis, Home Depot and Spotify continue to see great results. In fact, apps running on the Audience Network account for 6% of all time spent in mobile apps. In Q4 we reached a $1B annual run rate for advertising spend through the Audience Network, with the bulk of that value being passed to publishers, and the remainder being recorded as net revenue for Facebook.”
Facebook says the changes will enable it to focus its attention on growing Audience Network and LiveRail’s private marketplaces and mediation services. Publishers will still be able to work with LiveRail and Audience Network to monetize and manage their ad inventory.
“As we build out LiveRail’s programmatic private marketplaces and mediation services, we will continue to focus on native and video,” says Bowles. “We believe native and video are key ad formats and that programmatic platforms are the best way through which to deliver them. LiveRail already powers about 75 programmatic private marketplaces for some of the world’s largest publishers, including Hulu and A+E Networks.”
TechCrunch shares some additional insight into Facebook’s thinking after speaking with the company’s head of advertising technology, who notes that the change isn’t particularly dramatic as the LiveRail ad server only represents “tens of clients, well under 100”.
Facebook is sharing some new stats and success stories from the Facebook Audience Network, which it says has grown into one of the largest ad networks in the world.
Facebook first unveiled Audience Network at f8 in April of last year. Mark Zuckerberg referred to it as the first time the company would help developers monetize in “a serious way” on mobile.
The network officially launched in October of last year, enabling the company’s then 1.5 million active advertisers to contribute to the monetization of mobile apps. As of September, that number had grown to 2.5 million, by the way.
According to the company, mobile apps on the network now represent 6% of all time spent in mobile apps. Facebook also says that on average, advertisers using the Audience Network scale their ad impressions by an additional 6-10% per campaign.
“Spotify has expanded their reach by 20% by using the Audience Network to connect to non-Facebook users,” the company says. “iProspect, a Dentsu network company, reported an 11% increase in average revenue per user since utilizing the platform.”
Earlier this year, the company launched new ad formats for the Audience Network including native video and new formats for interstitials including Carousel Ads, Dynamic Product Ads, and Click-to-Play videos.
Last month, Facebook announced Advertiser Outcome Score (AOS) for Audience Network, which is described as a measurement system to evaluate publishers’ ad placements by their ability to drive outcomes for advertisers. Outcomes would be things like app installs, purchases, or registrations.
On Tuesday, Facebook announced Advertiser Outcome Score (AOS) for Audience Network, which is described as a measurement system to evaluate publishers’ ad placements by their ability to drive outcomes for advertisers. Outcomes would be things like app installs, purchases, or registrations.
The company says it’s providing more transparency into how placements are performing so publishers can better optimize their ads business, improve performance, and increase revenue.
“We believe that what provides great ads experiences for people drives better results for businesses,” says Facebook’s Huifang Yin. “Over the past three years, Facebook has built our advertising systems to deliver real business results for marketers and over the last year and a half, we have extended that capability through the Audience Network. By helping our over 2.5 million advertisers connect with people who are discovering their products and services, we’re able to drive value for the overall ecosystem: more relevant ads for people, real business results for advertisers, and better yield and experiences for publishers and the people who use their apps. Furthermore, as the Facebook ads system delivers ads to real people and optimizes for advertiser outcomes, it creates an environment where fraud is more difficult to exist.”
“Historically, ad networks have rewarded clicks and CTR as the primary metrics publishers should care about,” adds Yin. “Our system is different – we pay publishers based on the outcomes they create for advertisers. We have heard from publishers that they want to know how best to optimize in our system, and we are committed to giving our partners actionable insights so that they can grow their businesses.”
Publishers can look at Advertiser Outcome Score in the Audience Network dashboard.
Scores are based on a scale where one is the floor, and there is now cap (because there isn’t one on how well a placement can perform). Facebook says a strong score is eight or above. As the score improves, CPMs increase.
The company also says native ads represent 80% of impressions in the Audience Network and are delivering strong results.
In February, Facebook announced dynamic Product Ads aimed at helping marketers increase conversions and lower cost per acquisition across devices. As reported earlier, these ads are now available in the Audience Network, Facebook’s mobile ad network, which lets mobile apps monetize through Facebook’s advertisers.
That’s not the only thing new for the ads. The company also announced cross-selling functionality and conversion optimization features to come in the next few weeks.
“Advertisers have always been able to use dynamic product ads to show related products to people who have viewed an item or added it to their cart, and soon advertisers will be able to use dynamic product ads to show related products to people who have purchased an item too,” Facebook says. “So if someone purchases a bike on your website, you can start showing them product ads featuring complementary items, like bike helmets and baskets, since they may be interested in those products too.”
“Additionally, advertisers will have more flexibility in defining related items,” it adds. “Let’s say someone added a pair of designer shoes to their cart in your mobile app. You may choose to show them ads featuring products from your designer shoe category, plus items from the designer handbag category. It’s up to you how you define your product categories, and this update gives you more control.”
Advertisers will also be able to optimize the ads for conversions in that Facebook’s ad delivery system will find those most likely to purchase. The company says in early testing conversion optimization for the ads delivered more efficient spend than CPC.
On top of all of this, advertisers will be able to reach shoppers off of Facebook through the Audience Network, which will show ads in third-party mobile apps.
You can read this for comments from eBay and JUNIQE about the success they’ve had.
Facebook announced some new ad types and formats for Audience Network, the mobile ad network it launched in October, which lets mobile apps monetize through Facebook’s advertisers.
“Since launching last year, the Audience Network has provided publishers and developers with engaging, high performing ad units backed by Facebook’s 2M advertisers,” a Facebook spokesperson told us in an email.
Audience Network will now support native video and new formats for interstitials including Carousel Ads, Dynamic Product Ads, and Click-to-Play videos.
Facebook says the Carousel ads will give advertisers more real estate in full screen interstitials to showcase imagery for their mobile apps. They’ll be able to show five images in one ad unit.
The Dynamic Product ads let advertisers create ads based on the products people have visited on their app. Facebook first announced this kind of format a couple months ago.
“Retailers and e-commerce businesses with large product catalogs who want to create personalized ads for their shoppers can get a lot out of these formats,” the spokesperson said.
The click-to-play videos come in the form of full-screen interstitials that provide click-to-play video experiences that the users can control.
Facebook has a native ads mobile monetization page here that provides a number of resources for iOS and Android.
In May, Audience Network got some new native ad tools including a new way to manage multiple native ad requests so they can make sure the highest performing ad is delivered at the right time to the right person.
Salesforce released its Social.com Q1 2015 Advertising Benchmark Report, analyzing data from over a trillion ad impressions and hundreds of millions of dollars in ad spend across Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
According to the report, the overall CPM decreased by 11% globally to #3.30, which the company says reflects normal seasonal trends (with higher costs in Q4 due to the holidays). In the U.S., the overall CPM for Facebook decreased quarter-over-quarter to #3.72, while CTR increased to 0.86%, suggesting a “healthy engagement” level with Facebook ads.
Here’s a look at global Facebook ad trends:
“Mobile apps are a critical component of how consumers spend their time; according to Yahoo, 88% of the time that consumers spend on mobile devices is spent in apps, totaling 37:28 hours per month, according to Neilsen,” writes Zachary Reiss-Davis on the Salesforce blog. “Overall, New Zealand and Sweden were the most expensive countries to run mobile app install campaigns in Q1, at $6.16 and $5.28 respectively. After that is Australia ($5.22), Canada ($4.72), and then a cluster of European countries ranging from Germany to Spain. The United States ($3.04), and Japan ($2.79) follow.”
Here’s a look at how mobile app install ads, CPM & CPI vary by country:
The study found that in Q1, Desktop Feed CPM was significantly higher than Mobile Feed CPM in the U.S.
“Consumers are increasingly spending time in Facebook on a mobile device, which increases the available inventory of impressions on mobile,” says Reiss-Davis. “Several types of advertisers still focus on desktop ads, including eCommerce companies which are still using traditional re-targeting solutions on Facebook that are desktop-only instead of the brand-new Dynamic Product Ads. At the same time, the percentage of Facebook users who only use the desktop app continued to drop, reaching a low of 14.7% in Q1, down from 16.2% in Q4 and 24.1% in Q1 2014.”
While still fairly new to the game, the Facebook Audience Network also gets a look in the report:
Facebook is sharing some numbers on the performance of Audience Network, the mobile ad network it launched last year, which lets developers show Facebook ads within their apps and advertisers reach people beyond the confines of Facebook itself.
The company also introduced some new native ad templates for the network, as well as new native ad management tools and horizontal scroll for native ads.
Facebook Audience Network Performance
Facebook introduced Audience Network at f8 in April of last year, and gave it a proper launch in October.
Facebook advertisers can choose to have their ads appear in third-party mobile apps by way of Audience Network by choosing the option under Placement in the ads creation process:
Developers who wish to monetize their apps with these ads can apply to do so here.
“Over the last year, tests by both Facebook and our partners have shown how Audience Network ads are working for advertisers,” Facebook says in a blog post. “We found that Audience Network ads work well in tandem with ads on Facebook by extending reach and delivering returns that are comparable to News Feed ads. Audience Network ads helped the US Navy increase its campaign reach by 33 percent. Rosetta Stone used Audience Network ads to drive installs of its mobile app, reducing cost-per impression by almost 40 percent and reaching people whose engagement and likelihood to purchase was nearly 30 percent higher compared to other ad networks.”
Facebook mentions research by Fiksu finding that people who installed ecommerce apps from Audience Network Ads drove 20 times more revenue for the advertisers that those who downloaded the app from other display network ads. It also mentions research from Nanigans finding that cost-per-impression from Audience Network ads was comparable to News Feed ads, and even three percent lower.
Facebook says that since October’s launch, the number of apps in the network has increased by 5X and that over half of developer revenue from the network comes from native ads, with publishers seeing 7x higher CPMs for native ads when compared to standard banners.
“People have trained themselves not to look at the top or bottom of an app – the most common locations for standard banner formats,” says Facebook’s Jenny Abrahamson. ” An ad that is well integrated within the app design and naturally fits into the user flow has a much better opportunity of catching a user’s attention and ultimately leads to higher conversion rates. Poorly placed ads, especially those that pop up when a user first opens an app, have an adverse effect on user experience and engagement, including lower interaction rates with future ads — even when those ads are well designed.”
New Native Ad Tools
The new native ad templates for Audience Network ads are based on common ad format sizes and native ad best practices. Publishers can define font, ad height, background color, button border treatment, and various other properties so they fit in well with the app experience. That is after all what native ads are supposed to do.
Facebook is giving publishers a new way to manage multiple native ad requests so they can make sure the highest performing ad is delivered at the right time to the right person. The new native ads manager will automatically optimize for highest performing ads, and publishers can pre-fetch up to 10 ads and deliver them in the best order ranked by yield.
Documentation for implementing the native ads manager can be found here.
Finally, Facebook is giving publishers an easy way to implement horizontal scroll for native ads with a custom native template and support within the native ads manager.
The Audience Network should only prove more effective for both apps and advertisers as mobile usage continues to rise.
Facebook introduced the Audience Network at its f8 developer conference in April. This is its new mobile ad network, which lets mobile apps monetize through Facebook’s 1.5 million active advertisers.
The network is now “open for business,” as the company puts it.
“Over the past few months, we’ve optimized our network to improve performance, and today we’re formally launching and extending the service to more developers and publishers across the globe,” says Facebook’s Tanya Chen.
“The Audience Network shows people the right ads by extending Facebook’s targeting to third-party apps,” she says. “This means the ads match the interests of people, just as they do on Facebook. It also means people are more likely to engage with the ads.”
Existing advertisers can extend their Facebook campaigns to the Audience Network with a click.
There are native, banner, and interstitial formats on the Audience Network.
Deezer, Le Monde, Wooga, Zynga, Outfit7, Cheetahmobile, Vinted, Merriam-Webster, Shazam, Glu, MyFitnessPal, and IGN are among existing partners.
As expected, Facebook announced its Audience Network, it’s new mobile ad network. Product management director Deb Liu revealed it on stage at f8.
CEO Mark Zuckerberg called it the first time Facebook is going to help you monetize in “a serious way” on mobile. Here’s a look:
Right now it’s still considered an “expanded test,” but it’s a way for advertisers to extend into other mobile apps. It lets them use the same targeting capabilities as other Facebook ads as well as the same measurement tools.
“For marketers already running News Feed ads on Facebook, using the Audience Network takes just one click,” the company says. “The Audience Network will be available in all ad interfaces, as well as the API. Once a campaign is running in the Audience Network, our system handles optimization and delivery.”
There are three formats: banner, interstitial, and native. None of these require you to upload new creative. They use the same images you use for regular Facebook ads.
“With the Facebook SDK or by working with a mobile measurement partner, marketers can measure app engagements and conversions, demographic information and more,” the company says. “The results from Facebook campaigns and Audience Network campaigns can be broken out separately to show what’s working, or results can be viewed comprehensively.”
At first, the Audience Network is will cater to advertisers looking for app installs or app engagement, but will be opened to other marketing objectives later.
Facebook says it expects performance from the ads to vary in the early days.
It will roll out to more advertisers in the coming months.
Earlier this week, rumors came out that Facebook will be unveiling a mobile ad network at f8 on Wednesday. Mike Isaac at Re/code first reported that the company will pitch the ads to publishers and developers as “a way to leverage the social network’s vast database of user information for better ad targeting.”
Such a network would put Facebook in direct competition with Google’s AdMob, Twitter’s MoPub, and various other mobile ad networks.
The network’s name is Facebook Audience Network, according to a report today from TechCrunch’s main Facebook reporter Josh Constine. He says it will let developers target standard banners and custom ad units with Facebook’s personal data. He writes:
To start, Facebook will strike the deals with advertisers, pushing the 1 million that already pay for promotion on its own site and app to take advantage of new inventory on other apps. Many are already eager to do so. Given more specific targeting parameters, Facebook could previously only deliver a limited volume of impressions because it caps the number of ads it shows each of its 609 million daily mobile users. FAN will let it accommodate bigger campaigns some advertisers want.
He says ads will be delivered two ways: developers can integrate code to run the ads a replacement for whatever other network solution they’re using, and custom ad units will be tailored to fit apps they’re hosted in.
Constine goes into quite a bit more detail, so read his article if you’re really interested in what the company is planning on unveiling. Or you could just wait for them to unveil it.
Facebook has taken the last couple years off from hosting f8. You can find the schedule for this year’s here.
