Arriving fashionability
late — or, rather, not being invited until the party had been going on for awhile — Google will soon be able to offer its clients easy access to inventory available for real-time bidding
(RTB) on the Facebook Exchange (FBX).
When Google announced the partnership, my first thought was that it would cause prices on FBX to shoot upward.
While a
recent report from Turn shows that the prices on FBX are already on the up and up (eCPM is up 87% year to date), it's still relatively cheap. The eCPM of all Facebook ads was $0.45 in Q3, and the eCPM of over 20% of the
impressions was just $0.10.
A source close to the Google/Facebook partnership told me that the partnership was really about benefitting mutual clients. The "this is just business as
usual" response isn't the juiciest — because wouldn't this whole thing be much more fun if this was some grand plan by Google to somehow gain previously unobtainable insight into the world of
Facebook advertising? — but it makes sense.
For Facebook, the partnership figures to boost competition and, in turn, prices. For Google, it makes DoubleClick more valuable. It's a
win-win.
Previously, advertising agencies that use DoubleClick would have to use another source to reach FBX inventory for their clients. While annoying, plenty would do it.
At the same time, I'm sure there were several agencies that didn't offer access to FBX; DoubleClick was already connected to over a dozen exchanges, so it's not like its clients were
hurting for inventory options.
In either case, a new source of inventory will be made easily available for a substantial amount of advertisers, which means more advertisers are going
to be vying for already hot Facebook inventory.