Reports are suggesting that Facebook is aiming to establish a new advertising network that could become a major competitor to Google and Apple. The move is expected to be announced at this month's F8 Developers Conference to take place in San Francisco. It comes on the heels of a market boost for "app install" ads that Facebook has been leading and which Twitter announced it wants to implement.
Although Facebook has not commented on the rumors, a number of media reports suggest that the new ad service could be huge in terms of its ability to quickly attract users and disseminate ads on a number of platforms and services.
The plan is simple. Facebook will be able to continue to earn revenue from its more than a billion users even when those users are not on the social network. This means that Facebook can pitch ads to potential publishers by using and delving into the company's massive database of personal information. This would enable the company to target ads at users knowing their Internet history.
However, this does continue to raise privacy concerns and the debate over using personal data is not likely to be silenced in the coming period.
This is not the first time Facebook has looked at selling advertising to third-parties. In January, the company announced it was planning to sell ads on other platforms and websites through mobile devices. The overall goal of this and the rumored ad network is to create a unified platform that covers multiple angles of the marketing sector.
It also comes as advertisers are looking to cash in on the rapid rise in smartphones being used for browsing purposes. Until quite lately, using a smartphone for Internet browsing was largely void of ads, and this appears to be changing as companies want to generate revenue in as many different ways as possible. Facebook hopes to lead this charge.
Expectedly, this would put Facebook directly up against Google and its AdMob mobile network as well as Twitter's coming app install ads, which are expected to continue to revolutionize mobile marketing. But Facebook, with its massive number of users, could have the upper hand in the proceedings, as it is expected to be able to pinpoint activity from users for specific ad selling.
Sriram Krishnan, Facebook's product leader who announced the January mobile marketing move in Facebook's only public discussion on the topic, believes the entire endeavor is a work in progress.
"The current test is more like a mobile ad network," Krishnan said in January.
