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Facebook tests playable ads on news feed

Audience Network release planned for later this year

Facebook tests playable ads on news feed

Facebook is testing playable ads on its news feed that can be used to market mobile games.

The social networking platform is looking to take advantage of the popularity of video ads on its site to better tune its targeted ads for users. Video ads made up more than half of all the app ad spend on Facebook in 2017.

Ad-ing up

One of the beta testers, Merged developer Gram Games, said the playable ads outperformed video ads on user engagement and ROI metrics, with a 25 to 30 per cent ROAS gain over video.

Another beta tester, 8 Ball Pool publisher Miniclip, claimed that the playable ads resulted in three times the click-through rate, 25 per cent lower cost-per install and two-times the return on ad spend versus the regular video mobile app install control ad.

Facebook said it was working towards releasing playable ads across the Audience Network later this year.

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Staff Writer

Iain is a freelance writer based in Scotland with a penchant for indies and all things Nintendo. Alongside PocketGamer.Biz, he has also appeared in Kotaku, Rock Paper Shotgun, PCGamesN and VG24/7.