Last week, Facebook put to rest speculation that they were developing a mobile ad platform by launching Audience Network. Facebook Audience Network (or FAN) is a platform that allows you to extend your existing Facebook ad campaigns to third-party mobile apps.

Let me take you through its capabilities and explain what you can expect from FAN as an online marketer.

Facebook Ad Capability in Third Party Apps

The great thing about FAN is that it makes Facebook Ads’ features available for third-party mobile apps. Creating visually appealing ads, targeting audiences, and measuring performance on desktop and mobile are features of Facebook Ads that are also included in Audience Network. Because FAN uses the same measurement tools and the same segmentation capabilities, measuring campaigns won’t be a problem if you’ve used Facebook Ads before.

You can easily extend your existing Facebook ads to cover third-party applications as well. With one click, your FB ads will be available in all third-party ad interfaces, as well as the API. According to Facebook, they will handle the optimization and delivery for campaigns you sync through FAN.

Three Ad Formats Available

Another thing you can expect from FAN is a variety of ad formats you can use. In order to maximize the effectiveness of your ad campaigns, Audience Network gives you three ad formats to choose from: Facebook banner ads that appear above / below an app’s page; interstitial ads that appear when a user completes an action; and native ads, which appear within the app content itself, and is marked as a sponsored post.

The three ad formats you can choose for Facebook Audience Network ads
The three ad formats you can choose for Facebook Audience Network ads

You won’t need to create a different set of images for these third-party app ads either. Facebook will automatically resize the current images in your existing Facebook ad campaigns and use this for the Audience Network ads, while making sure it feels like a natural part of the app in which it appears.

Preparing for the Full Rollout

It’s not yet available for all advertisers, but Facebook will be rolling out FAN to all advertisers very soon. In preparation for this, you should:

  • Make sure your images are optimized for both desktop and mobile viewing, because Facebook will pull from your current ad campaigns
  • Prepare segments especially for third-party app users. Think of the apps where your ad might appear, and create an approach that will engage those audiences
  • Set up your monitoring system to track conversions, whether you want to use Facebook’s platform or you want a third-party analytics tracker instead

We’d be glad to help you prepare for the full rollout. Talk to your account manager today, or sign up to become our partner now to get started. Keep checking back for more updates!

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