The Facebook Audience Network extends the targeting capabilities of Facebook Ads beyond the social network itself. It displays your ads on third-party apps and websites to reach more of your target audience. Although Audience Network ads can access Custom Audiences, they have lower click-through rates. This ad network offers one of the most affordable advertising options from Facebook. We’ll explain the Audience Network in detail - its formats, pricing, pros and cons, and how to determine if it should be part of your Facebook ad strategy.
What is Audience Network Facebook Ads?
Facebook Audience Network extends your ad reach beyond Facebook itself. It places your ads on third-party mobile apps, websites, and videos. This means you can display ads to potential customers when they're not actually on Facebook - while browsing websites, playing games, or watching a video within another app.
The main benefit is reaching new audiences who don't have Facebook accounts. With Audience Network, you can target non-Facebook users based on their interests and behaviors across these other apps and sites.
Audience Network leverages the same advertising tools available on Facebook. You can create customized audiences, use detailed targeting options, set bids, and analyze performance metrics. It functions as an extension of your Facebook ad campaigns.
Initially Audience Network placed ads on apps and websites. But now it is solely for in-app advertising across mobile apps. Despite this reduced scope, Audience Network's network expanded massively this past year as more app developers joined.
How Does Audience Network Work?
The Audience Network leverages the data and targeting capabilities of the Facebook ad platform to display your ads to the right users in the right apps.
When you create a Facebook ad, you can opt to include the Audience Network as an additional placement. Facebook then uses all the detailed targeting criteria you specified - interests, behaviors, demographics etc - to identify users on third-party apps that match your target audience.
For example, if you target "basketball fans aged 18-35" on Facebook, your ad may be displayed in a sports news app or game to users with those characteristics. The goal is reaching more of your ideal audience off Facebook with relevant ads.
The Audience Network supports multiple ad formats to blend with the app experience - banner ads, full-screen ads, native text/video ads etc. The format chosen depends on the app and context to capture user attention.
Advertisers only pay when users view the ads (CPM pricing) or click/interact with them (CPC pricing). So you get valuable extra reach without unnecessary spend from irrelevant placements.
Types of Ads Available on Facebook Audience Network
The Facebook Audience Network enables advertisers to utilize multiple ad formats across various third-party mobile apps and websites. Selecting the right format is key to effectively engaging users and driving results.
Native Ads
Native ads seamlessly match the design, style, and user experience of the host app or website. For example, in a mobile news app, the ad may take on the look of an article suggestion. The goal is for native ads to blend into the experience rather than awkwardly stand out. This leads to higher click-through rates as they don't interrupt users. Native ads work extremely well in apps where the content is immersive and scrolling-based.
Banner Ads
Traditional banner ads can leverage multiple placement options within mobile apps - top, bottom, or middle of the screen. While small, banner ads remain one of the most commonly used formats for building brand awareness. They are less disruptive and better suited for apps where user attention needs to remain focused on central tasks like gameplay. Banner ads often link to external sites making them ideal for driving traffic.
Interstitial Ads
These full-screen ads take over the mobile screen during transition points in apps, such as in between levels of games or chapters of ebooks. The brief but complete capture of attention enables strong promotional messaging. Interstitials work well when apps have logical breaks built into the user flow. Gamified apps provide openings to highlight special rewards or offers without detracting from the core experience.
Rewarded Video Ads
Rewarded videos exchange rewards like app currency or badges for a completed ad video view. This format capitalizes on the trend toward gamifying and incentivizing app interactions. It works extremely effectively in gaming apps where virtual goods carry real value. Rewarded video engages users who actually want to watch in return for something beneficial. Brand recall is also higher thanks to the focused attention users give to the video.
Benefits of Using Audience Network Facebook Ads
Incorporating the Facebook Audience Network into your ad campaigns offers several unique advantages:
Vastly Expanded Ad Reach
The most direct benefit is access to a vast network of mobile apps and websites beyond just Facebook and Instagram. Audience Network’s ad inventory encompasses thousands of high-quality apps and sites spanning gaming, entertainment, e-commerce, and more. According to Facebook, its monthly potential reach is over 2 billion globally when combining their platforms and Audience Network. Tapping into even a fraction of this extensive network greatly amplifies the number of users that can view your ads.
More reach translates to higher brand imprints, awareness, and lower effective CPMs. And you access premium inventory not available in traditional display channels. Overall, you cast a much wider net to obtain users and traffic.
Leverages Advanced Facebook Targeting
Powering this expanded reach are the same robust audience targeting tools made available for standard Facebook campaigns - interests, behaviors, demographics, custom/lookalike audiences etc. So you direct ads beyond Facebook but to precise segments of users or existing customers. No longer do you broadly target just by geography or contextual placements. Audience Network lets you engage users across their digital journey with relevant messaging tailored specifically for them.
Drives Higher Advertising Engagement
An added advantage stems from user mindset and intent. People choosing to play games or read content on apps tend to actively engage with and click/tap advertisements more than passive social media browsing. Audience Network picks up on these signals of willingness to interact with ads and matches user intent to relevant promoted content.
Results are commonly stronger engagement metrics like video views, clicks, and conversions relative to Facebook. You drive not just brand visibility but actual interest and leads. Combined with strong creatives, this spells greater campaign performance.
Maintains Brand Consistency & Visibility
With Audience Network powered by your Facebook ads, it seamlessly acts as an extension of your broader campaigns. It preserves the same ad messaging, identity and presence across Facebook sites/apps over to third-party properties where your audience spends time. This cultivates consistent exposure for your brand, connecting the dots digitally for consumers.
A Disadvantage of Using Audience Network Facebook Ads
While offering extensive reach and flexible formats, advertisers should be aware of some key limitations with the Facebook Audience Network:
Limited Transparency and Control Over Placements
The Audience Network works by automatically placing your ads across thousands of sites and apps based on the targeting parameters you specify. However, advertisers have minimal visibility into which exact platforms their ads appear on. There is no self-serve interface to hand pick placements.
You simply set budgets and rely on Facebook's algorithm. This blackbox approach limits optimization capabilities. It becomes challenging to accurately evaluate the value individual apps/placements drive and optimize accordingly. Poor visibility also raises brand safety concerns.
However, Facebook does offer tools to block categories of low-quality inventory. Overall, there is a tradeoff between extensive automatic reach and transparency.
Lower Conversion Rates Compared to Facebook Feeds
On average, ads placed via Audience Network convert at lower rates than Facebook's own feed and stories formats. This could result from various factors - differences in mindset/intent, ad formats, target relevancy across placements etc.
So despite broader reach, your actual revenue or ROI might suffer without further optimization. Those gains require testing creatives, bids, tracking conversions by segment to improve. Otherwise the impressions could amount to little.
Intense Competition Among Advertisers
Given the vast reach into valuable mobile audiences, competition for placements in popular apps can be intense. This drives up auction bids and prices which tampers with cost efficiency.
Unless targeting more niche interests, costs for the Audience Network can sometimes exceed native Facebook. Dynamic bidding strategies become important to control premiums.
What is the pricing of Facebook Audience Network ads?
The Facebook Audience Network offers very competitive ad pricing, which contributes to its popularity among performance-driven advertisers.
On average, Audience Network pricing is 20-30% cheaper than standard Facebook ad placements across multiple pricing models:
- CPMs: $7.94 for Audience Network vs $11.63 for Facebook feed - 32% lower
- CPC: $0.69 vs $0.89 for feeds - 23% cheaper
- CPI (cost per install): $1.59 vs $1.68 for feeds
However, despite the lower cost-per-action, conversion rates within the Audience Network tend to be lower than Facebook. So your cost-per-purchase/lead can end up higher.
In essence - the Audience Network extends reach through budget-friendly impressions and clicks. But conversions may cost more due to engagement differences.
This dynamic suits the Audience Network best for amplifying existing successful campaigns rather than starting from scratch. If your ads already resonate on Facebook, you can ride that momentum to expand reach efficiently. But expect optimization to achieve conversions.
The combination of expansive reach and affordable pricing makes the Audience Network a cost-efficient channel for later-stage Facebook advertising efforts. Just ensure you have the optimization expertise to handle the differences.
Measuring the Success of Audience Network Ads
Determining the true value delivered by the opaque Facebook Audience Network relies on rigorous measurement across multiple dimensions:
Reach & Frequency
Assessing gross and net reach into the Addressable Audiences available provides scale context. 100K+ new users reached daily demonstrates extensive incremental exposure. Frequency caps can help balance excess repetition on loyal mobile users.
Engagement Rates
Compare click-through rates on native ad formats (0.5-1%), video completions (30-60%) and overall interactions to benchmarks. A 2x higher CTR for gaming app install interstitials indicates strong creative relevance.
Conversions & ROI
Attribute downstream conversions to click sources. If shopping app Brand X generates 100+ daily sales from Audience Network clicks, calculate 15-20% incremental transactions delivered. Factor marketing costs and margins to validate positive ROAS.
Cost Efficiency
Balance CPMs and CPCs against the value delivered above. If the incremental orders above cost $12 CPA, compare to the $18 CPA for Facebook feeds alone to demonstrate cost savings.
Ongoing multi-touch attribution ties media exposures across publishers to conversions powered by set-based analytics. Optimizing towards the strongest performance signals continuously improves results at scale Facebook ads.
Inclusion, The Facebook Audience Network extends your ad reach to over 2 billion users by placing them in relevant mobile apps and sites. Although opaque, the channel offers extensive scale, precise targeting, and competitive pricing. Robust analytics and testing are key to optimizing performance within the "black box" of placements. For many advertisers, working with a Facebook ads agency that provides pre-vetted Audience Network inventory and expert optimization may prove more efficient than managing in-house. Renting Facebook ad agency accounts from Rent Ads Agency grants proven expertise and immediate scale.
Mohamed Fouad is a full-stack web developer and an entrepreneur who's really into advertising. He is the CEO of Rent Ads Agency, a company that helps businesses reach more customers through advertising. He graduated from Stanford University in 2018 and has over 4 years of experience in the tech industry.
