February 9, 2012

Facebook Users Gird for Mobile Ads

Ads could hit Facebook mobile apps as soon as March. Will users mind on the small screen? Larry Greenemeier reports

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Facebook's pages are packed with information—your news feed, info about who's online and advertisements that use personal information to deliver highly targeted sales pitches. Members accept these ads on a PC screen, but what about on smaller mobile devices?

About half of Facebook's 850 million members access the site via mobile gadgets. And the company admitted in its recent $5 billion initial public offering that it needs to make more money from mobile. That effort could come in the form of mobile ads starting as early as March, according to the Financial Times.

Details are scarce but you can already find similar ads alongside your news feed on Facebook's Web page. A mobile version might be embedded in your news feed. Or it could show up on its own page, and you would have to touch your phone's screen to get past it to your news feed.

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Facebook will find out in a hurry whether its members mind the intrusion. Its service is already free—so it may not be easy to justify ads on the precious real estate of your phone's small screen.

—Larry Greenemeier

[The above text is a transcript of this podcast.]

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