Scoop

Another piece of news on the mobile marketing front…and once again another opportunity to potentially cash in huge.

According to the Financial Times, Facebook is set to launch advertising on mobile devices.  This comes as no surprise for a few reasons:

1 – Facebook is looking to increase revenues any way possible for the IPO

2 – Over 50% of Facebook access is now on mobile devices (thus they are effectively losing out on almost half of their potential revenue)

3 – They are currently not monetizing mobile as they should be

 The Financial Times said that, “Several people familiar with Facebook’s planning say that it has already discussed proposals with advertising agencies for displaying what it calls “featured stories” in the news feed seen by users on the site with a launch likely in early March ahead of its initial public offering, which is expected in May.”

It looks like they definitely plan to offer featured stories and I’m sure there will be other forms of ads.  Lets take a look at some possibilities you might want to prepare for…although it’s likely they will roll out different ad types slowly and deliberately to ensure user acceptance.

Sponsored Stories

To be able to run a sponsored story, your business must have a facebook page and “Likes”.  So in order to prepare for sponsored stories advertising make sure that you have a facebook presense and get some Likes!

Banner Ads

It’s likely that Facebook will attempt to monetize with display inventory of some type.  Don’t expect your average top and bottom mobile banner placement from facebook.  I would put money on Facebook creating some proprietary ad sizes and placements for their display inventory.

Be prepared to adapt your mobile display banners…and jump on things early while everyone else tries to catch up.

Localized Ads

I would expect Facebook will tap into local targeting capabilities and pass this option on to its advertisers.  This is extremely powerful for brick and mortar local businesses but could potentially be “exploited” by creative affiliates…especially in the beginning when competition is likely to be low.

So here we have yet another mobile marketing opportunity that could potentially be the biggest one yet.  Keep an eye out on this, prepare ahead of time, and get in early!

Recently, admob made an announcement that they are changing the AdMob auction for their CPC ads.  Checkout their official announcement:

 To ensure that we deliver the most effective mobile ads marketplace to our customers we are changing the AdMob auction for all cost-per-click (CPC) ads.

Effective February 15, 2012, AdMob will move to an AdWords-style auction, where the winning price is determined by the quality of the ad and the other bids on that impression; the price we charge will never exceed the advertiser’s bid. In addition, we’re removing minimum bids and targeting fees to allow AdMob CPC advertisers to compete for inventory under the natural forces of supply and demand.

Advertisers will benefit from more efficient pricing and could receive cheaper clicks depending on the inventory on which they bid.  High quality ads will be rewarded with an improved chance at winning the auction.

This change will occur for all CPC auctions globally on Feb 15th. There are no changes to non-CPC campaigns at this time. Advertisers should monitor their bids to see the effect on their particular campaigns, and be prepared to adjust bids & budgets to ensure they are meeting their volume & ROI goals.

We look forward to bringing AdWords auction components that have been refined over the years to the AdMob platform to benefit advertisers, users, and publishers.

So what does this mean for you?  What this means is that your ad quality is of much greater importance now than it was before.  Similar to adwords, the quality of your ad can make a big difference on the price you pay for your clicks and if your ad gets shown.

Why are they doing this?  Well, it’s basically to help rid the CPC platform of what Google calls “low quality” ads.  Just like they have done with adwords.

This means that it’s extremely important that you create high quality ads to ensure that your click cost is low and you are getting the maximum amount of inventory.

Affiliates with high quality and high click-through ads are going to be rewarded handsomely for a while as many advertisers get slapped and try to scramble to regain their inventory.

You can take advantage of this if you are able to create high click-through ads.  So jump in and create some campaigns with “high quality” ads…and you’re very likely to see a TON of cheap traffic while other advertisers blow up around you in mass confusion.

Happy cheap mobile traffic while it lasts!!!