Facebook Improves Mobile Ad Targeting To Specific Devices

Ahead of quarterly earnings, on Wednesday, Facebook announced a unique improvement to its mobile ad-targeting powers.
 
Advertisers and developers will soon be able to reach the owners of specific mobile devices, from the Samsung Galaxy S5 to the iPhone 5s.
 
As a result, advertisers and developers “will be able to reach the most relevant users and optimize [their] bids by bidding separately per device,” Jun Li, a software engineer at Facebook, explained in a blog post.
 
To date, advertisers have been able to target users of specific mobile operating systems like iOS or Google’s Android, but extending that reach to specific phone models was not possible. The change should also put users of Facebook’s Mobile App Ads in a better position to identify which devices are working best for their apps and respond accordingly.
 
In testing, “one travel company determined that a significant amount of their mobile revenue is coming from an iPhone 5s and can now target engagement ads at people with iPhone 5s specifically,” Li noted.
 
In addition to using device-level targeting, advertisers and developers can now create Custom Audiences consisting of their mobile app users. As a result, a developer with multiple apps can now cross-promote their portfolio of apps to those consumers that they know that like their apps.
 
Part of its broader mobile strategy, Facebook recently strengthened ties between its mobile app ads and other formats by connecting them to a Facebook page -- adding social context as well as like, comment and share buttons.
 
In the first quarter, Facebook saw revenue increase 72% to $2.5 billion. Almost 60% of the $2.27 billion in ad revenue came from mobile advertising.
 
Stateside, all social media advertising revenues will grow from $5.1 billion in 2013 to $15 billion in 2018 -- representing a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 24% -- according to a recent forecast from BIA/Kelsey, which attributed the rapid increase to an explosion in mobile and native advertising.
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