The social network is working on appealing to this market through a promise of successful advertising.

In an effort to become more appealing to app development firms, Facebook has been testing an entirely new form of mobile ads service since at least the end of January, which provides advertisements directly to a certain handful of smartphone and tablet applications.

Now, that social network is starting to indicate that an official launch of the service may occur in April.

The suggestion has been made that the mobile ads service could be launched at the F8 developer conference, next month. This would make an offering to all app makers for an entirely new revenue source that had not previously been available through the social media giant. Until now, the platform simply wasn’t in a position to truly assist developers in being able to monetize their apps.

Facebook has now taken its time to develop a mobile ads service that it believes will promise success.

According to Ilya Sukhar, who is responsible for the oversight of developer efforts at Facebook, “That had to be figured out.” He went on to say that “There just generally was a period of time when the company, as has been widely reported, has been figuring stuff out [on mobile]. This is a signal that we think we’ve figured it out.”

He explained that assisting developers in being able to monetize their applications will be a central focus of the announcements that will be made next month at the conference. In the past, the F8s in the past were primarily focused on rolling out features on Facebook that were more consumer facing. This will be different, this year, as developers will be nearly the only focus of the event, according to Sukhar, who also added that it will “help folks build, grow, and monetize their apps.”

Monetizing is one of the largest struggles faced by mobile app development companies. As Facebook has considerable strength in monetizing attention, they are hoping to be able to combine those two environments through their mobile ads service, for mutual benefit between themselves and developers.

Security is attracting more attention from merchants engaging mobile consumers

Merchants are beginning to become more aware of the dangers that exist in the mobile and digital spaces, according to the results of the 2nd Annual Mobile Payments and Fraud Survey conducted by Kount, The Fraud Practice, and CardNotPresent.com. These dangers have existed for some time, but merchants have been blind to them as they rushed to enter into the mobile commerce space. While mobile commerce has become quite popular, it has also become quite a risky thing to participate in because of the lack of security that exists on many popular platforms.

Survey shows that many merchants are participating in mobile commerce, but few have adequate security in place

According to the survey, 66% of merchants around the world now support mobile commerce. Mobile commerce support among merchants is expected to rise by 30% annually over the next few years. Merchants are becoming more comfortable with the mobile space as they begin to expose themselves to consumers that primarily shop and purchase products from smartphones and tablets. These merchants are working to become more accommodating to these consumers in the hopes of remaining relevant with changing consumer behaviors.

Mobile commerce continues to be a risky field

The survey shows that nearly a third of merchants consider the mobile space to be more risky than e-commerce. Mobile commerce has become a popular target for hackers because of the trafficking of financial information. This information can be somewhat easily accessed by hackers because of the lackluster security that exists with most mobile commerce platforms. While this has become a major concern for merchants, it has also caused many consumers to avoid mobile shopping.

As security improves, consumers are likely to become more active in mobile commerce

As merchants become more conscious of the risks that exist in the mobile space, they are beginning to take security more seriously. This means introducing new features to popular mobile commerce platforms that merchants have designed themselves. More security is expected to increase consumer spending in the mobile field because they will feel more confident in the safety of their financial information.