Facebook Inc (FB) Offers Bandwidth Detection For Advertisers

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Advertisers can now target their ads based on signal strength on Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB).

Facebook Inc (FB) Offers Bandwidth Detection For Advertisers

Essentially, the announcement for Facebook will allow advertisers to limit their data-heavy ads like video to those using 4G connections and not waste their marketing dollars on people connecting to the social media site through 2G connections in remote locations and the developing world. Advertisers will also be able to use this addition in conjunction with other targeting options.

All about video ads

“Targeting by mobile network type helps advertisers choose creative that will run smoothly on any given device and connection speed. For example, serving a video ad to people in Indonesia with 2G connections may mean wasted impressions if people are unable to load the video or it buffers for minutes when clicked. Optimizing the creative — for instance, targeting a video campaign to people with high-speed connections, and swapping in an image or link ad for people with slower connections — means ads can perform more efficiently for the people seeing them,” said Facebook product marketing manager Brendan Sullivan.

While advertisers in United States can use expensive auto-play video ads without having to worry too much about whether or not they can be viewed but this does not hold true in developing markets like India, Thailand and South Africa where many are using feature phones to connect to Facebook.

“People in high-growth countries around the world are coming online at a staggering rate, and a majority are accessing the internet via mobile networks,” wrote Sullivan in a blog post. “In these countries, a mobile phone is much more than a way to place calls and send messages.”

Facebook’s new altruism? Nah

Facebook and altruism rarely collide in the same sentence so it’s safe to say that Facebook is helping advertisers help Facebook which is highly reliant on advertising and mobile advertising specifically as a key revenue stream.

Facebook had already offered advertisers the ability to target ads based on operating system, device type and model but advertisers had been lobbying the social media giant for bandwidth segmentation for some time and Facebook finally listened.

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