Facebook Wants to Help Sell Every Ad on the Web - Trackibg Non Users
Facebook Wants to Help Sell Every Ad on the Web
The social network will show ads to non-Facebook users on
other websites
By JACK MARSHALL May 27, 2016 12:00 a.m. ET
Facebook has set out to power all advertising across the
Internet.
To that end, the social network and online advertising
company said Thursday it will now help marketers show ads to all users who
visit websites and applications in its Audience Network ad network. Previously
Facebook only showed ads to members of its social network when they visited
those third-party properties.
The change is a subtle one, but it could mean Facebook
will soon help to sell and place a much larger portion of the video and display
ads that appear across the Internet. The change will also intensify competition
with Alphabet Inc. subsidiary Google, which dominates the global
digital-advertising market, and a wide range of other online ad specialists.
“Publishers and app developers have some users who aren’t
Facebook users. We think we can do a better job powering those ads,” said
Andrew Bosworth, vice president of Facebook’s ads and business platform.
Facebook disclosed in March that about 1.65 billion
people now use the site each month. According to the International
Telecommunication Union, a total of 3.17 billion people used the Internet
globally in 2015.
To date, Facebook has only showed ads across its Audience
Network to Facebook users, targeted based on information the company has
collected about its users’ tastes and behaviors. Now Facebook plans to collect
information about all Internet users, through “like” buttons and other pieces
of code present on Web pages across the Internet. It will then use the
information it collects to target ads to non-Facebook users.
“Our buttons and plugins send over basic information
about users’ browsing sessions. For non-Facebook members, previously we didn’t
use it. Now we’ll use it to better understand how to target those people,” Mr.
Bosworth said.
For example, if a non-Facebook user visits a
cooking-related website, Facebook might determine that person is interested in
cooking and may target them elsewhere across the Web with ads for
cooking-related products. One way it will do so is by placing small pieces of
code on users’ devices called cookies, which can be used to identify them as
they move around the Internet.
This type of tracking and ad targeting is now commonplace
online and is already being employed by a wide range of online advertising
networks and ad companies to help marketers place ads across the Internet.
But Facebook thinks it can use the technology and tactic
more effectively than other online advertising companies, thanks largely to the
enormous amount of data it has on its own users. That can help it spot patterns
in people’s behaviors and better infer what a non-Facebook user might be
interested in based on a relatively small amount of information, Mr. Bosworth
said. Online advertisers sometimes refer to this tactic as “lookalike”
targeting.
“Because we have a core audience of over a billion people
[on Facebook] who we do understand, we have a greater opportunity than other
companies using the same type of mechanism,” Mr. Bosworth said.
If widely used by publishers and media companies, the new
feature could mean Facebook will have a hand in selling and placing a larger
portion of online ads, which could help it generate additional revenue. The
company generated over $17 billion in ad revenue in 2015.
Facebook gets an unspecified cut of the revenue from ads
it sells through its Audience Network. Typically, the company takes a roughly
30% share and gives the rest to publishers, according to people familiar with
the matter.
Some publishers might be wary of handing more of their ad
sales operations to Facebook. Many already rely heavily on the social network
to generate traffic for their sites, and some now post content directly to
Facebook through Instant Articles.
Non-Facebook users will be able to opt-out of
“interest-based” advertising from Facebook, the company said. Facebook members
will also be able to opt-out of seeing ads outside of the social platform based
on their on-Facebook interests.
Marketers buying advertising across the Facebook Audience
Network will have the option to not show ads to non-Facebook users if they
wish, but that ad space will be included by default, the company said.
Write to Jack Marshall at Jack.Marshall@wsj.com
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