Facebook Opens Up Its Audience Network (Beta)

[engine]

Facebook's Audience Network is being opened up today to over 2.5 million advertisers, and to mobile, and now is a whole new big player in the marketplace.
The Audience Network lets advertisers place their ads in apps that aren't Facebook.
If you're a publisher with a mobile site you can now make money off these ads.

Today the Audience Network is expanding to include support for mobile web, bringing the value of native ad formats and people-based marketing to a new set of publishers. We're also enabling 2.5 million Facebook advertisers to reach more of the people they care about on mobile devices. Facebook Opens Up Its Audience Network [developers.facebook.com]

With no SDK integration required, getting started with the Audience Network for mobile web is quick and easy. Once a publisher is approved, they simply add a JavaScript tag to their HTML page source code and then they can start creating placements right away; publishers can even go live the same day they are approved.

Previous story
Facebook Launches Expanded Test of Audience Network Ad Campaigns Into Mobile [webmasterworld.com]

[Nutterum]

That is interesting. Will they fight with the likes of doubleclick or purely compete with the adsense program?

[martinibuster]

From a report in AdWeek [adweek.com]

Ad inventory will include banner and native ads on publishers' websites. According to Facebook, native formats now make up more than 80 percent of impressions through the Audience Network and perform as much as seven times better than standard banner formats. Boland said Facebook has seen a fivefold increase in the number of publishers offering native ads year over year.

Facebook's Audience Network is massive. Earlier this month, the company revealed it had a $1 billion annual run rate during the fourth quarter for advertising spending, with the majority of that money going to publishers. According to its third-quarter earnings report, Facebook's mobile ad revenue totaled $3.4 billion.

There's something about that phrase... "majority of that money going to publishers." The sign-up page is here [developers.facebook.com].

A testimonial from the FB Ad Network Page [developers.facebook.com]:

gBeing a closed mobile web beta partner for Facebookfs Audience Network has been a phenomenal experience for us. We worked closely with the team to easily implement custom native units and have been seeing fill rates significantly higher than our other ad networks. We view the Audience Network as our top partnership and believe their scale, forward-looking native strategy, and focus on creating value for publishers, will be key in the long term sustainable growth of our ads business.h

] Gary Manning, Co-founder, Diply

[LuckyD]

Ok, so I just went ahead and added one a 300x250 banner on the mobile version of my site. Quite stressful to get through the application process (US tax forms for non-US entities), plus the "Get HTML" window doesn't give me the code I needed. If that's the case for you, go to the Instructions page, take the code from there, and copy-paste your App ID and Placement ID in the fields inside the code market [APP-ID] and [PLACEMENT-ID]. Change "test-mode=false" to true to see if the intergration works before pushing it live.

Now we have to wait and see how the ads will perform. My Geos are 45% US, 12% India, followed by the UK, Canada, Australia etc. Will check in in a few days with the results.

[martinibuster]

Nice looking ads. Appealing, not trashy. Look great on mobile.

[engine]

I wonder if people realise how big this is! It's early days, and still in beta, so there's a way to go, but it's got to be worth trying.

[LuckyD]

Ok I think I might have run into some kind of issue already, only 9h in. I'm getting a 0.19% fill rate. The few impressions I got from my segment were only the ones I saw myself when testing the placements. Anyone seeing something similar?

When clicking on "See performance for all my apps", FB suggests that I put the SDK script straight after the body tag, which I didn't do, as it was clearly stated that you don't need an SDK to run the ads.

[martinibuster]

Ads Only Visible to Admins and Developers
You're currently testing your Facebook ad placements, so only the administrators and developers of this app or mobile website will see...

[RhinoFish]

Using the word Audience in the name Facebook Audience Network, confuses me.
The FAN was just for running ads in non-Facebook Mobile Apps, and now they've added Mobile Web, right?
If the code is on a responsive page, and it is viewed by Desktop, does the ad show?

[RhinoFish]

When clicking on "See performance for all my apps", FB suggests that I put the SDK script straight after the body tag, which I didn't do, as it was clearly stated that you don't need an SDK to run the ads.

Is it because... SDK is required for apps, but not for this newly added "Mobile Web" functionality?

[martinibuster]

If the code is on a responsive page, and it is viewed by Desktop, does the ad show?

No, it doesn't show. I'm researching an if/else thingy or likely JS to show other ads for desktop. If anyone has suggestions I'm all ears! :)

[Maleda]

Following with interest

[LuckyD]

@martinibuster, thanks. I should learn to read what's on the screen. Now I'm wondering whether I should leave the code on the page while it's being approved (these "few" business days).

[RhinoFish]

I'm an Advertiser, not a Publisher, but am very interested in seeing this discussion continue - from either side, preferably both. :-)

[shri]

>> No, it doesn't show. I'm researching an if/else thingy or likely JS to show other ads for desktop. If anyone has suggestions I'm all ears! happy!

martinibuster - use DFP and restrict to mobile. Have another network supply the desktop version and disable mobile for that version.

[magician]

In one of the other threads, someone said that ads are only visible to people who are logged into facebook in the browser. Is it true? I think it's a VERY BIG limitation if it's true and will definitely result in very low fill rates.

[olias]

Now I'm wondering whether I should leave the code on the page while it's being approved (these "few" business days).

I decided to just go ahead and leave the code on some of my pages, 2 days later and several thousand requests and not approved yet. I suspect now they have opened this up the "few" business days might stretch into a few weeks instead.

ads are only visible to people who are logged into facebook in the browser. Is it true?

I wouldn't be surprised. Will feedback on it once I'm up and running.

[LuckyD]

ads are only visible to people who are logged into facebook in the browser. Is it true?

Facebook matches the device ID, not the cookie. Having the Facebook app installed on the device should be more than enough.

[shri]

Has anyone here heard back from Facebook on the approvals process?

[LuckyD]

Nope. Even worse, when I connected the "App" (my mobile website) to the Business Manager, the "Get Help" button suddenly disappeared completely. No way to ask for support now, although the only thing FB is referring me to is that exact button.

[olias]

Had code in place since last Wednesday, ~30k requests but not been approved yet so no ads served.

[engine]

That all seems a little sluggish in getting started, but it's worth persevering. Perhaps because it's still in beta it's not treated as a real service just yet.

Please keep up updated on your approvals and developments.

[freitasm]

I have been running this for eight days now. Facebook says it is still learning from my traffic. The first five days it did show ads but zero impressions/fill. Yesterday it started showing ads, reaching 39% fill rate today - I am not in the USA.

I am waiting for this process to finish to compare with adsense. For the same volume of traffic yesterday and today Google AdSense would have paid ten times more.

Let's see how it goes...

[clipse]

I've also been running this for about five days now. Initially I could not get the HTML code - as mentioned previously it was blank. I contacted them and within a day they replied and informed me a fix was coming within 24 hours.

They were correct.

That said, I contacted them again to see about how long it was taking for approval and was never given a response.

Showed ads the first day and after the five impressions, the fill rate stopped and now its sitting there collecting impressions and doing nothing.

[clipse]

Just as an update, Facebook got back to me and explained they were having delays in regards to approvals and hope to have it 'fixed within a few days'.

[LuckyD]

@clipse, how did you contact FB? I don't see the Get Help button anymore. Having the same issue with the approval. Waiting for 9 days already.

[clipse]

@Lucky - On the Developer's page, click the link in the box 'Audience Network Mobile Web' entitled 'Mobile Web'. It should take you to this link: [developers.facebook.com...]

Scroll down and you'll see a contact us area.

[freitasm]

Just got an email saying my site was approved.

[clipse]

Got an email too - though mine was rejected.

[olias]

My site was approved a couple of hours ago, been monitoring the stats. Fill rate is in the region of 43% at the moment.

I've just set up an A/B test alongside Adsense. Will report back when I've got a few days worth of data to compare.