Facebook unveils non-social mobile news feed ads for apps
Facebook has revised its ad units for its mobile apps on iOS and Android, for the first time allowing developers to buy non-socially generated slots for their titles.
The slots in question feature in a 'try these games' panel in the user's news feed as before, but instead of purely being generated by the activities of their friends, developers can now purchase 'sponsored' spots that target specific types of users.
As detailed on the Facebook Developer blog, the new slots are charged on a pay per click rather than a pay per install basis, with one tap of the game in question sending the user to the corresponding download page on the App Store or Google Play.
Ad happy
Their targeted nature means those booking slots can specify a user's sex, location or age for maximum efficiency, though Facebook has not revealed how frequently the panels will appear in a user's feed.
"Facebook has increasingly become a way for iOS and Android developers to grow their apps," detailed Facebook's Vijaye Raji on the blog.
"In the past 30 days, we have sent people to the Apple App Store and Google Play 146 million times, via clicks from channels such as news feed, timeline, bookmarks and App Center.
"Mobile ads are an additional way to drive people to apps."
Soft start
Naturally, Facebook has provided developers with analytics tools to enable them to monitor the performance of their ads, with an estimated reach also calculated when they choose the perimeters of their target audience.
Its launch, however, appears to be a soft one.
Facebook had previously avoided actively selling ad slots for apps on its mobile app wary of annoying users, though pressure from investors to monetise the social network's mobile efforts appear to have forced a change in approach.
As such, it seems sponsored game recommendations will be displayed aside the traditional socially generated ones, hopefully limiting any user aggravation that may result.
The ad slots are also only currently available via a private beta for developers that have integrated their apps with version 3.0 of the Facebook SDK for iOS.
[source: Facebook]