The launch of Facebook’s Android platform “Facebook Home” will ultimately provide marketers will huge opportunities, according to mobile advertisers and social media specialists.
Marc Fine, head of marketing at InMobi, said it was very interesting that Facebook plan to take over the mobile phone device and provide consumers will a single stop to communicate.
“It’s really interesting to see the direction they’ve chosen,” said Fine.
“Ultimately, they will be delivering ads direct to people's home screens. Facebook has increased mobile ad spend from nothing in 2011 to nearly a billion dollars forecasted for this year. The big numbers are starting to flow, so that’s great for people like us in the mobile ad industry," he added.
Fine believes Home is going to be good for marketers.
“It will create new opportunities of reaching consumers on their mobile, which has become the dominant device, and it will drive on the whole mobile ad industry,” he said, adding that he will be interested to see how consumers respond to it.
Fine said Facebook is looking at where the next billion internet connections are going to come from globally, which is most likely from emerging markets in Asia.
“In emerging markets it’s all about the mobile, and Facebook know this, and like all the big IT companies they’re reengineering to become a mobile business.”
He also believes Google will be watching the move by Facebook closely.
“Facebook is creating its own communication screen, and the fact the Android is an open operating system, they’ve chosen it as the platform. It is something Google will respond to.”
Julian Ward (pictured), director at We Are Social, said Facebook’s Home may solve what mobile has been trying to do for years: nail location.
"The fact that Facebook always on, that consumers have this thing to go to, inadvertently creates opportunities for brand content and commercial messaging on the newsfeed, it's something that the mobile market has been striving to do for years,” said Ward.
“It will have massive implications in terms of being able to turn it into a commercial opportunity. This is potentially enormous, but we’ll wait and see what the uptake is like.”
