Facebook’s initial public offering acknowledges that though nearly half of its 845 million monthly users are logging in to the social network via mobile devices, that segment “does not currently directly generate any meaningful revenue.”
Of the 845 million monthly users Facebook reported in December, 425 million accessed the site on mobile devices.
At present there are no ads on Facebook’s mobile sites or services.
Despite the risk of backlash from users accustomed to ad-free mobile experience, Facebook says that it may introduce “sponsored stories” to the mobile set soon.
Because Sponsored Stories requires a person’s friend to validate a piece of content by interacting with it in some way before it is shown as an ad, Facebook is not giving companies a direct ticket into the News Feed.
The social network has already added Sponsored Stories to Ticker and is in the early stages of testing them in News Feed. The lack of negative feedback from users could lead Facebook to bring Sponsored Stories to mobile without backlash sometime this year. We detailed what mobile Sponsored Stories might mean for advertisers here.
In Asia and Africa there are very large numbers of consumers who will never own a laptop computer, but already own a mobile phone.
As Facebook develops mobile ad solutions it effectively helps open up ad markets that have previously not existed. Although they are likely to be low-yielding, their volume will be massive.
But since Facebook doesn’t control mobile operating systems, it remains vulnerable to tweaks that might hurt its products’ functionality or grant preferential treatment to rival products.
