Facebook has been making news recently with its possible competition in the world of mobile ads, where Google Inc. and Apple Inc. have established themselves firmly. The social networking giant has a big hold on the online advertising, but mobile ads would be a whole new horizon. Succeeding in this case would not really be a problem for Facebook as its fame and name will carry it through easily. The stats even note the same. A report says, “Since 2006 Facebook has established itself as a major supplier, increasing its market share from just 0.2% to 3.1% in 2010.” It even notes, “Last year Facebook doubled its share and overtook AOL; at its current pace of growth it is likely to overtake Microsoft by the end of 2011.”
Interestingly, without mobile ads, Facebook managed to earn a decent chunk of the market share. Another report from Bloomberg, cites “two people with knowledge of the matter,” saying that Facebook is planning to push into mobile advertising by the end of March, ahead of its IPO.
Ad spent with Facebook has grown noticeably, which even can be noted in the chart posted below:
Mobile is an underestimated power source, which is slowly being explored and soon one might see heavy traffic on mobile. That would not take time, in fact a few more head starts, like Google and Apple would ignite the ‘I want to have a mobile ad to promote my business’ feeling in many many more all over the world.
eMarketer had its own details to note as its new report. One can see how much of ad budgets are being dedicated to mobile. The chart below accounts for only US details. It seems, in no time Facebook advertisers will even want to jump into the mobile ads pool, as the need to be on mobile is increasing day by day. The importance is in the time spent, which can be noted as the “time spent share” for newspapers and magazines compared to mobile is notable, as the ad share is almost inversely proportionate. It definitely does not make sense.
Facebook has been quite famous among advertisers and Facebook’s step to enter the world of mobile ads will thus be effectively welcomed. In fact, it would even be easy to match with physical location targeting.
For the revenue portion, it would even be added as a handsome source of income for Facebook.
However, in an related development, Facebook is reportedly testing some new coupons and ads. So, the revenue patterns are divided and throwing in everything at the same time or one after the other, will guarantee success without Facebook directly asking for.
It can even be noted that with more than 800 million users, Facebook has an opportunity to command more than ask. It might not even call for advertisers for the newly explorable fields, but thousands of advertisers would be there already.
Facebook, still will have to try and keep controversies out, as the next year will bring thousands of changes, some positive, some negative. Its major change, IPO success would majorly depend on how Facebook keeps itself away from the controversies.