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.
The company’s data compression could also make the social network more friendly to the wallet experience.
Facebook has just announced another acquisition, this time involving a startup from Tel Aviv called Onavo, which has apps that include services that are designed to compress and monitor mobile data.
This could help Facebook to improve on two very meaningful levels.
As Facebook has been honing its mobile credentials to attract the spotlight, the services from Onavo apps could prove to be very helpful as it could help to encourage more marketers to shed their doubts and give the social network a try.
Equally, these apps could help to enhance Zuckerberg’s efforts with Internet.org.
The compression technology might assist the Internet.org program’s attempt to bring internet connectivity into regions that are out of reach for other forms. It could also make Facebook a realistic option within regions of the developing world where data consumption is considered to be a costly luxury. Moreover, it would shrink the roaming charges that would be applied to consumers in the rest of the world.
Beyond having been adopted as a new Facebook subsidiary, Onavo will also be converted into a Facebook satellite office in its home town in Israel, which will become the first time that the social network has had a direct presence in that country. At the moment, no information has been revealed regarding the amount of money that was involved in the acquisition, but there have been speculations ranging anywhere from $100 million to $200 million.
Onavo expressed in a blog post that “We’re excited to join their team, and hope to play a critical role in reaching one of Internet.org’s most significant goals – using data more efficiently, so that more people around the world can connect and share.” They also went on to add that “When the transaction closes, we plan to continue running the Onavo mobile utility apps as a standalone brand. As always, we remain committed to the privacy of people who use our application and that commitment will not change.” It has also been speculated that the tech will be integrated into the Facebook mobile applications in order to make them more efficient in terms of data consumption, as well.
