Facebook Closes LiveRail Ad Server to New Customers to Focus on Audience Network

LiveRail-Facebook.gifFacebook has ceased accepting customers for its video SSP (Supply Side Platform) LiveRail as part of a move to offer more support to its FAN (Facebook Audience Network) offering, FAN enables advertisers to target Facebook users on other sites via across a network of third-party publishers, using the same targeting parameters available when advertising on Facebook itself.

LiveRail’s focus going forward will be on developing its PMP (Private Marketplace) offering, through which LiveRail publishers offer premium inventory to advertisers to buy programmatically. LiveRail currently powers around 75 programmatic private marketplaces for publishers including Hulu and A+E Networks.

The move was announced in a blog post in which Facebook’s head of global sales and publisher operations, Alvin Bowles noted the success Facebook has enjoyed with FAN, pointing to a 10-fold year-on-year increase in the number of apps on FAN, and the fact that apps running on it account for 6 per cent of all time spent in mobile apps. He also said that Facebook reached a $1bn annual run rate for advertising spend through the Audience Network in Q4 2015.

Bowles wrote: “At Facebook, when there is a product that gains traction like Audience Network, we look for ways to build it out quickly and make it even better. That also means shifting away from other efforts, if necessary. Today were sharing some changes to LiveRail, our monetization platform for publishers. These changes allow us to focus our attention on growing the Audience Network, as well as LiveRails private marketplaces and mediation services.”

The post also includes a quote from Jason DeMarco, director of programmatic & audience solutions at A+E Networks, who says: “We have been working with LiveRail via their private exchange service for over three years connecting to programmatic buyers. Nobody else in the market has come close to matching the abilities and effectiveness of LiveRail, and we are very excited to see Facebook making investments in their programmatic products.”