(Reuters) - Facebook Inc rolled out a new service that it envisions will distribute ads across a network of mobile applications, opening the door to a new source of revenue for the Internet social network.
The service, which the world’s No. 1 social network has been working on for some time, allows mobile-app makers to insert various types of ads within their software, with Facebook sharing advertising dollars with the developers.
The network can deliver banner, interstitial, and native ads using the same creative assets already put to use on Facebook. So far test partners include apps from the Huffington Post and Audible, said Deb Liu, product management director for Facebook, during her keynote.
“We bring it all together for you so you don’t have to go out there as a publisher or developer with your sales teams to sell ads,” she said. “You don’t have to do billing, reporting, or measuring on the part of advertising. It’s all done for you.”
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The power of Facebook’s network will be its ability to offer relevant ads to its users based on their personal information and preferences, says Mario Zelaya, managing director of Toronto-based Majestic Media. His firm coordinates Facebook marketing campaigns and builds social apps for clients.
“Besides Facebook, no one really offers that type of targeting,” he says. “What good is spending $100,000 if you’re not targeting that audience you’re looking for?”
On the developer side, his hunch is that any developer using Facebook Connect to attain a sign-in identity for their app will be able to turn on the ad network faucet pretty easily. It could be a way for startup developers to quickly start pulling in revenue and Zelaya was already e-mailing his clients during the F8 keynote to tell them they should consider trying it.
“Drop a few lines of code and all of a sudden we’re advertising natively within an app,” he says.
Another app developer, Ziyan Hossain, product and business strategy for Concord, Ont.-based Qnext Corp. would also consider using Facebook’s mobile ads network for the free version of his company’s apps. While Qnext offers ad-free paid-for apps, they also offer freemium versions that contain advertising. But he suspects the network may quickly become a competitive marketplace.
“This tool will get saturated over time,” he says. “The likelihood of you showing up on someone’s feed will cost you more or you’ll sink down.”