Facebook has acknowledged the perceived difficulties it is having monetising its mobile platform,but has claimed that it benefits advertisers more than any of its other channels.
Matt Trainer,manager Facebook PMD(Preffered Marketing Developer),made the claims today at the Oracle OpenWorld conference in San Francisco.
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"Everyone thinks mobile is going to be Facebook's'Home Alone'moment,"said Trainer.People think it'll come into our nice house and ransack it,but it's our home turf.Or app has 543 million active up users,and is growing 67 per cent year on year.It's actually growing way faster than Facebook itself grew."
While the popularity of the social network's mobile platform is not in doubt,many industry experts have questioned its efficiency as a revenue stream,with mobile screens often thought to be too small to effectively display advertising.
And investors apparently agree,judging by the sharp fall in the firm's share price since its IPO in May.
Trainer,however,was bullish,claiming that the mobile platform offers a better return for advertisers than any other Facebook channel.
"The mobile feed has higher ad recall and engagement than the Facebook news feed.There is eight times the ad recall in the news feed compared to any other part of the site,and mobile is 10 times better than that,"he said.
He stated that the addition of analytics into advertising's performance to the social network has made the business case for partnering with Facebook easier to build.
"You can tell clients about ad recall and brand awareness,you can give them stats on that,but clients want to know if they're earning money.We partnered with[advertising metrics firm]Nielsen,who looked at 60 campaigns and found that 70 per cent of them had an ROI of 3x or greater[meaning that firms earned on average three times their advertising spend].We hadn't done that before due to lack of outside analytics.
"You can take this measurement to your CFO,which helps businesses to justify their investment in social."
Trainer concluded by stating that every business needs to take mobile seriously,or risk being left behind by competitors.
"Online desktop properties are flat or declining,people go less and less to them.If you're not already investing in your mobile experience you're too late.2013 needs to be your year of mobile,otherwise you'll be flat footed in 2014.Especially in the growth markets,mobile will be the only way most people access the internet."
