No More Mobile Web and In-Stream Placements on Facebook’s Audience Network

6 February 2020
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No More Mobile Web and In-Stream Placements on Facebook’s Audience Network
On February 5, Facebook
confirmed its decision to nix mobile web and in-stream ads from Audience Network. The changes are expected to come into effect on April 11 this year.

In its Help Center post, Facebook warned that campaign performance may be erratic during the shutdown period. All existing in-stream videos and mobile web placements will be supported until April 10. Data reports will be accessible for six months after April 11, and advertisers will get their final payments on the 22nd of the month.

A Facebook spokesperson said in a statement:

“We make business decisions based on where we see growing demand from our partners, and that’s in other ad formats across mobile apps. We’re focusing our resources there moving forward.”

The question remains open, however, as to what reasons stand behind such a move. Most likely, this decision was driven by a considerable drop in the use of third-party cookies initiated by major browsers’ recent changes. 

What’s more, mobile web placements are said to represent only a small fraction of Audience Network’s business and Facebook’s overall revenue in general, which accounted for $70.7 billion in 2019.

Facebook Audience Network was launched back in 2014 and was initially designed to enable advertisers to run effective ads on third-party mobile apps. In January 2016, Audience Network was extended to mobile websites. 

Facebook’s internal data suggests that over 1 billion users are interacting with Audience Network ads each month. Currently, its clients include such major brands as Pandora, Activision, TikTok, and Tinder.

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