Facebook is planning to make the leap into mobile advertising by the end of March 2012 in an attempt to create a fresh revenue stream ahead of a possible initial public offering. Having originally intended to introduce the new advertising service on mobile devices earlier this year, the company seem determined to roll it out early next year although the possibility of it being delayed again- similar to their Timeline feature which has only been introduced today – is a possibility.
The move, reported by Bloomberg, would see Facebook compete with the likes of Google and Apple to gain a foothold in the ever growing and lucrative mobile market. Facebook’s obvious advantage is that it reportedly has over 800 million users with the company expecting to break the billion mark through mobile devices as opposed to desktop platforms. According to the site, around 350 million of these users already access Facebook through mobile devices.
Facebook’s other advantage is that it can gather so much information about a person’s life, their persona and who they associate with. Creating context sensitive adverts would be well within their capabilities as they can target potential customers more directly than say Google or Apple.
Although it’s in their interests financially to get the advertising service up and running as soon as possible, they could delay it till mid 2012 as they try to figure out the best way to implement them. Yet the company are expected to experience an increase in revenue from $4.27 billion this year to $6.9 billion for 2012. It’s estimated that almost 90 per cent of their 2011 sales will come directly from advertising revenue.
