Facebook has opened up Audience Network, the third-party ad network it introduced in 2014, to mobile web publishers.

Audience Network uses Facebooks user data for ads on apps and sites outside of its social network, enabling the inventory to be bought through Facebooks own ad buying tools. This was originally limited to apps, but trials on the mobile web began last January with a select number of publishers, including the Daily Mail, Washington Post and Forbes. 

“This test gave us important insights into the business dynamics between technology providers and publishers,” said David Jakubowski, director of Facebooks publisher solutions. “With the way ad bidding happens in programmatic advertising, publishers are consistently losing margins to third-party middlemen who make the rules and obfuscate the truth. These are well-known issues, and they are being combatted through new technologies like header bidding. Header bidding is a more transparent bidding process where publishers see what every advertiser or technology provider is willing to pay for every impression.”

This move makes it available to qualified mobile web publishers working with one of Facebooks chosen technology partners – Amazon Publisher Services, AppNexus, Index Exchange, Media.net, Sonobi and Sortable – and eventually to any mobile web publisher using header bidding, as long as they join up to Audience Networks through approved partners or through open-source header bidding solutions.

Facebook reports a revenue increase of 10-30 per cent for publishers integrating Audience Network header bidding.

“By using Audience Network via header bidding we achieve yields on qualified impressions that are 2-3x higher than we receive from traditional exchange based demand,” said Matt Wheatland, Daily Mail US director of programmatic.