Mobile Ads | featured news

Facebook was once a darling of investors, then a turnoff. Now, a year after going public, the social network seems to have settled into a more stable relationship with Wall Street. But the company has still been taking pains to prove that it can make more money from its base of more than a billion users, especially from those using Facebook on mobile devices.

What if mobile ads for games and other apps weren’t quite as random as the standard dating service and fantasy game fare, but actually showed some effort in reaching you, the individual user? An app discovery platform, Hooked, has been trying to do that in the chaotic marketplace of Android app stores. Now it’s looking to add some accountability to those ads by integrating its recommendations into ads for mobile apps and browsers.

Some interesting numbers from Norwegian browser company Opera today, as their 'State of Mobile Advertising' looks at impressions and revenue in Q4 2012. Much like that great golfing analogy (driving is for show, but putting what wins you the dough), there is a distinct difference in mobile advertising income and expenditures over the two major platforms. And it points to a healthy ecosystem for developers on iOS devices.

Facebook lost $59 million in the third quarter, but the newly publicly traded social networking site saw its shares soar on Wall Street early Wednesday. Facebook shares gained $4.35, or 22%, to $23.85 in early trading, after the company reported gains from mobile advertising.

...There’s also the issue that these mobile ads are completely new. Users don’t know any better and happen to click on them. However, over time (and probably pretty quickly), they will learn to avoid these new ads. When banner ads began in the 1990s, CTRs over 5% were common. They are currently 0.2 – 0.3%.

On most days, Twitter is now generating the majority of its revenue from ads shown to its users on mobile gadgets, rather than from ads on Twitter.com, company executives said. One key reason: People who see a Twitter ad on their phones are more likely to click or interact with it in some way, which is how Twitter gets paid for advertisements.

Facebook Inc., owner the world’s largest social network, says it’s working on a location-based mobile-advertising product that will allow companies to target users with real-time data showing their whereabouts.

Apple has to decide whether it wants to play in the ad world or not. Eddy Cue will now make that decision.

It’s taken a while, but newspapers across the U.S. are finally ready to leverage all those retailer relationships, build their own mobile coupon service and possibly revitalize their dying ad businesses.