Demand Side Platform (DSP) StrikeAd has welcomed Facebooks plans to introduce real time bidding for advertisers via its Facebook Exchange platform, announced last week.

Facebook Exchange will enable brands to re-target users on an impression-by-impression basis via their selected DSP. For example, a travel site may be interested in reaching a user who has searched for a flight but for one reason or another did not complete the purchase. With Facebook Exchange, this travel website can now show that user a related ad on Facebook.

eMarketer is projecting that RTB (Real Time Bidding) spending will make up $2bn (£1.3bn) of the roughly $15.6bn expected to be spent in desktop display this year. StrikeAd head of EMEA, Tim Finn believes that, while RTB-enabled Facebook mobile inventory is not yet available to the DSPs that have been selected, the eventual availability of this inventory on mobile will introduce a global audience of mobile advertisers to the benefits of programmatic buying via RTB.

But Finn cautions that any re-targeting, which is what Facebook Exchange is, must be accurate and compliant with all legislation protecting the rights of the mobile consumer. “Only this way will Facebook Exchange enable advertisers to realise globally the full potential of its mobile consumer audience,” he says.

Finn adds that StrikeAd will launch its own proprietary re-targeting solution later this year. This will identify devices uniquely, without retaining any personal data, using unique identifiers such as cookies, UDID, wi-fi and MAC addresses. StrikeAd then syncs these IDs across various exchanges and media types, such as mobile web and apps, to create the StrikeAd ID, enabling the company to re-target a user without limitations across traffic type or device.

“Users are always clearly informed of this tagging and are always given a quick and easy way to opt-out of the process,” says Finn. “To do this, the StrikeAd IDs belonging to the user are marked as “do not track” and no other data against these StrikeAd IDs is ever stored again. This exchange syncing service allows us to ensure that a user is uniquely identified regardless of the proprietary identification mechanism used by the exchange, while still clearly complying with all EU and US regulation and best practice.”