Los Angeles — With a recently discouraging second quarter report, and the first since their IPO, social networking humongous Facebook is pushing mobile ambition harder than ever. The social media hub is testing a new mobile ad unit to capitalize on growing use of mobile phones, a trend which threatens to cannibalize its advertising business, the company said in a blog post Tuesday.
In its blog post, the social media giant mentions that it has sent people to Apple’s App Store and Google Play 146 million times during the past 30 days with features like news feed, timeline, bookmarks and App Center.
However, it is never good enough for them though and the company is now capitalizing on that trend, letting app developers pay to have ads for their apps shown directly into a users’ mobile news feed. If the user clicks on the ad, it can direct the user to an app store where they can purchase that ad.
In order to monetize on its mobile segment, the company said, “Facebook has increasingly become a way for iOS and Android developers to grow their apps,” the company said. “Today we are announcing a new way for mobile app developers to growth their business with an ad unit that helps them reach and reengage their users.”
More so, the new ad unit will empower advertisers to promote their mobile apps, and it will be listed under Facebook’s “Sponsored stories,” which is the social network’s essential product for brand advertisers. The new ad unit will be targeted at different advertisers — those looking for installs of mobile apps — and priced on a cost-per-click basis.
Interestingly, these promoted app will be displayed as a recommendation alongside apps that are being recommended organically based on a user’s history and social graph under different headings such as: ‘Try These Games’ and ‘Try These Apps’, but will be flagged with the text ‘Sponsored’ Like any other ad, it can be targeted to users based on age, gender, location, likes and interests.
According to Facebook spokesperson Vijaye Raji, the company has already commenced testing the ad unit with a handful of beta partners. He further added, “Mobile ads are an additional way to drive people to apps. When a person clicks on one of these ads, if they do not have the app installed they will be sent to the App Store or Google Play to get it.”
As Raji described, designing, launching and monitoring your mobile app advertising campaign takes place within the App Dashboard. The new mobile ad for apps campaign is actually really easy to set up. It is pretty much identical to the promoted post feature that allows brands to pay for more exposure. To begin with, you have to head over to the App Dashboard and pick the app you want promoted.
From within the App Dashboard, you can select your app and audience, specify your budget, select your payment method and start your campaign. From there, Facebook takes care of the rest. They will direct you to a page where you can track your ad’s performance. They will even provide a sample ad to let you know what it looks like.
Besides, the ad’s scope, clicks, frequency and spend can be tracked effortlessly via the dashboard, and the ads can take advantage of all of Facebook’s biographical, interest and device-targeting options.
The blog post urged developers interested in joining a beta test for the product. Besides, the ad unit will initially charge developers on a cost per click basis, but once it picks the momentum, Facebook will ultimately turn to a more lucrative and expensive model where it can charge developers each time their app is downloaded.
So, if you are interested in joining, the new mobile ads for apps is available in beta form at the moment. You can sign up for it here. While you’re there, Facebook encourages you to integrate the mobile ads with the new Facebook SDK for iOS 6. This will help them test both features.