Facebook’s ad network is all about getting the right ads in front of you

SAN FRANCISCO — Today at Facebook’s long-awaited f8 developer conference, the company officially announced its Audience Network.

“Advertising, traditional advertising still works really well and it works well on mobile,” said Facebook executive Deb Liu during her opening keynote. “What people on Facebook are looking for are ads that are integrated, not disruptive,” she added.

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Liu said that advertising is all about format. Banner, interstitial, and native are the three ad formats Facebook is making available through this network.

Facebook has already developed effective ad targeting from the amount of data it has about its user, and this will now help advertisers marry powerful targeting with the right formats for maximum results for its advertiser, Liu explained.

Facebook currently has over 1 million advertisers on its site, according to Liu.

“I’m really excited about the audience network,” said Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg. “This is the first time we’re going to really help you monetize on mobile.”

Reports of an upcoming ad network surfaced a couple of days before the company’s Q1 2014 earnings call. Re/code reported that Facebook would unveil its ad network at its developer conference after announcing in January that it had started to experiment with selling ads on other company’s apps.

During Facebook’s earnings call, chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg confirmed this:

“We are in very early testing for a mobile ad network. We do see an opportunity here to improve the relevance of the ads people see on and off Facebook. It’s really the early days and we’re in the early testing stage.”

For its Q1 2014 financial results, Facebook netted $2.27 billion in advertising revenue, and mobile advertising represented about 59 percent of that, up from being around 30 percent in 2013’s first quarter, marking a definitive area of growth for Facebook to capitalize on.

In early March, Instagram inked its first advertising deal with the Omnicon advertising agency for a year-long commitment for up to $100 million in advertising. Brands working with Omnicon’s media and creative agencies can now tap into Instagram as an additional medium for their ad campaigns. 

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