Evolution of LiveRail & Audience Network

Over the past two years, a growing number of mobile app publishers have found success – better returns and more relevant advertising – through Facebook's Audience Network and the people-based marketing approach that powers it. We have seen the number of apps on Audience Network increase 10x YoY, and agencies and advertisers like Dentsu Aegis, Home Depot and Spotify continue to see great results. In fact, apps running on the Audience Network account for 6% of all time spent in mobile apps. In Q4 we reached a $1B annual run rate for advertising spend through the Audience Network, with the bulk of that value being passed to publishers, and the remainder being recorded as net revenue for Facebook.

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 we're 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 LiveRail's private marketplaces and mediation services.

We will no longer be accepting new customers for LiveRail's ad server. In the coming months, we will help all existing LiveRail ad serving customers transition over to our other publisher products or alternative ad servers. In either case, publishers will still be able to work with LiveRail and Audience Network to monetize and manage their ad inventory.

As we build out LiveRail's programmatic private marketplaces and mediation services, we will continue to focus on native and video. We believe native and video are key ad formats and that programmatic platforms are the best way through which to deliver them. LiveRail already powers about 75 programmatic private marketplaces for some of the world's largest publishers, including Hulu and A+E Networks.

“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." - Jason DeMarco, Director, Programmatic & Audience Solutions, A+E Networks

"At Hulu, we believe in data informed targeting and LiveRail is a programmatic backbone to our Advanced TV offering. We are excited to see Facebook double down on LiveRail’s platform of media automation and data informed targeting as it is an important part of every branded publishers success in the future.” - Peter Naylor, SVP, Advertising Sales, Hulu

With Audience Network, we will continue to introduce new ways for publishers to take advantage of everything that makes Facebook ads valuable to our partners: high-quality demand, people-based marketing, measurement and our ads delivery engine.

We believe that by focusing on these core strengths we will create better experiences for people, and drive more value for publishers and advertisers.