Google today announced a partnership with Facebook based on the way both companies generate the larger majority of their respective revenue: ads. Google will participate in FBX, Facebook’s real-time bidding exchange, in order to help its own marketing clients.
[blockquote style=”quote” align=”” author=”Google Announcement”]Partnership has been key to Google’s success as a rising tide lifts all boats. So we’re excited to announce a new way to help our clients succeed by working with Facebook to participate in FBX, their real-time bidding exchange…we’re always looking at ways to serve our clients even better – starting in a few months, clients will be able to buy inventory on FBX via DoubleClick Bid Manager.[/blockquote]
Facebook Exchange, which launched in June 2012, lets advertisers bid on ads that visitors are targeted with after visiting third-party websites by using cookie tracking. These visitors are then shown ads related to their web browsing when they return to Facebook.
[blockquote style=”quote” align=”left” author=”Karsten Weide, VP-digital media and entertainment at research firm IDC”]Facebook’s FBX partners — the companies who buy ads based on tracking cookies inside Facebook’s ad exchange — are making as much as $150 million a year in revenue.[/blockquote]Facebook launched FBX in June 2012 to let advertisers buy cookie-based retargeted ads on Facebook’s site. When someone visits an advertiser’s website, say to buy a flight to Hawaii, a cookie is dropped onto the user’s computer. The site can then pass this cookie to a demand side platform ad tech service that uses it to target that same user with an ad on Facebook. So if the person didn’t buy the flight, the travel site can show them ads hawking that exact same flight at a discount in hopes of getting them to pull the trigger.
DoubleClick Bid Manager, meanwhile, originates from Invite Media, a display advertising and exchange bidding company that was acquired by DoubleClick in June 2010. Google bought DoubleClick in March 2008
DoubleClick allows clients to buy ads on dozens of different ad exchanges, but excluding Facebook may have forced some clients to look elsewhere for their media buying needs. Once the integration is live, DoubleClick will become more of a one-stop-shop for buying ads across the web.