Investors demand more revenue from Facebook, and Sheryl’s got just the APIs to give it to them. Over the last two days, three major ads tech partners have revamped their products with recently released Facebook APIs that allow brands to track and optimize for on-site conversions including app installs, buy home page ads and logout page takeovers, and target ads specifically to mobile.
The new capabilities in tools from Buddy Media, Nanigans, and BLiNQ Media (who just updated today) will attract ad dollars from app developers, huge brands, and local businesses. That means more revenue for these Ads API providers and more revenue for Facebook, which it needs to rescue its share price, down 11.7% today.
On July 12th Facebook revamped its Ads API to handle premium ads sales, including home page and logout page placements which appeal to the world’s top brands and those like movie studios that need to reach a wide audience quickly.
It added the option to target ads to mobile specifically on June 5th, which attracts both app developers seeking installs and local businesses trying to reach people out on the town.
And a bit further back on April 18th it boosted the Ads API with the ability to optimize and track ads to attain the most on-site conversions — everything from shares and comments to Page Likes to brick-and-mortar checkins. That means instead of seeking impressions or click throughs, advertisers can pay for what they’re actually trying to achieve.
However, little ad spend from these products factored into Facebook’s first earnings report yesterday where it just barely hit projections. That’s because the big tools built on the Ads API hadn’t been updated to take advantage of the new features. That changed this week.
Buddy Media bought Ads API provider Brighter Option in February, but it wasn’t up to date with these three new capabilities until yesterday when it launched a major update to its ads tool.
Nanigans was quick to jump on the mobile ad targeting and conversions API, and this Wednesday integrated premium ad buying. The company has quietly grown to power 12,000 Facebook ad impressions per second and serve A-list clients like Fab and American Express. I think there’s a good chance they’ll get acquired by some old-world enterprise marketing giant.
And today BLiNQ Media revealed to me that its launching version 2.0 of its BLiNQ Ad Manager, which supports mobile and premium ad buying. It has taken much less funding than other companies in the space, so it could be an easy acquisition for a social marketing company such as Wildfire that currently partners to offer Ads API access, or lacks ad buying power entirely.
Other Ads API companies have also updated their products to handle the new capabilities, including Unified, and AdParlor.
There’s some proof that Facebook’s new ads types including mobile are performing well, including reports like ours featuring data from multiple ads API companies that showed a 13X for mobile ads over web ads. And the social network can rely on these providers to try convincing advertisers.
But it will need more than one-off examples like Sheryl Sandberg citing on Facebook’s earnings call that Electronic Arts got a 4X return in sales on its Facebook ad spend. It needs irrefutable evidence that social ads work before Wall Street will budge and give its ugly share price some love.
Facebook’s head of advertising Greg Badros will be on stage at our Facebook Ecosystem CrunchUp on August 3rd, so buy your tickets to soak up strategy on making social ads work for you.
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