Facebook also took the wraps off its long-awaited mobile advertising network, called “Audience Network,” a product that enables Facebook to sell ads in mobile applications besides its own. For example, Coca Cola can show ads on a mobile game that a Facebook user has downloaded on his or her phone.
The service will increase its competition with Google, which dominates the mobile advertising market and has its own ad network. Twitter is expected to announce its own, too.
“Everything is going mobile right now, so in order to compete with companies like Google, it needs to have a strong mobile app, which it already does, and a strong way of delivering mobile advertising - not just within Facebook but across a network of mobile apps,” said Debra Aho Williamson, an analyst with research firm eMarketer.
Williamson believes Facebook's ad network will help improve the health of the overall advertising business. Many mobile apps will likely be eager to work with Facebook because its social network already has relationships with more than 1 million advertisers and has accumulated valuable insights into people's interests.
“It's going to make it so that advertisers don't have to reinvent the wheel every time that they advertise,” she said. “They will be able to go to just one source, one network and distribute it widely.”
Facebook's share of the $9.7 billion U.S. mobile advertising market was 16 percent last year, according to eMarketer, compared with 41 percent for Google. This year, Google's share is expected to slide to under 38 percent, while Facebook's should increase to nearly 18 percent, according to the research firm.
To Kirkpatrick, though, Facebook's most interesting announcement Wednesday may have been one of the less-talked about features. The company introduced “app links,” an open-source tool for developers to link mobile apps together. Without this, clicking on a link on a mobile device takes people to a website rather than a mobile app, even if that app is already installed on the phone. Or in the case of iPhone users, for example, clicking on a map inside Yelp to get directions to a restaurant will open up Apple's maps app, even if the user wants Google instead.
App links will work across all devices, whether they are made by Google, Apple or Microsoft. The app links tool is free to developers. Kirkpatrick compared it to Internet.org, the Facebook-led venture that seeks connect every person in the world to the Internet.
“It's not just for their short-term benefit,” he said. “They know that if they work on that problem for the long term, for the benefit of the mobile Web in general, because they are the largest app on the mobile Web, they will benefit.”
