Facebook to test TV ads delivered via its ad network to apps on devices like Apple TV and Roku
that is, if the TV people let them in http://www.recode.net/... @KurtWagner8 @pkafka See also Mediagazer
Context & Ripple Effects
This test is the next step in a push Facebook started more than a year earlier, when it rolled out new ad products explicitly aimed at winning TV advertising dollars. What changes now is the delivery surface: instead of ads inside Facebook's own feed, its ad network would place TV-style spots inside third-party apps running on Apple TV and Roku devices.
The timing matters because measurement was the open question — weeks later, Bloomberg reported Facebook was testing targeting that links Facebook profiles to streaming devices via IP addresses, which is what would make connected-TV inventory valuable to the same advertisers who buy against Facebook's user data.
First-order effects
- Advertisers gain a way to buy connected-TV placements through Facebook's existing ad-buying relationship rather than negotiating separately with each streaming app, and app publishers on Apple TV and Roku get a new large-scale demand source for their ad slots.
- Roku and Apple TV become distribution territory Facebook must work through rather than around — the Recode framing ('if the TV people let them in') puts device owners and app makers in the gatekeeper position over whether the test proceeds.
Second-order effects
- Traditional TV ad sellers and network-owned streaming apps now compete against inventory priced and targeted like digital media, pressuring them to match Facebook's data-driven targeting or cede the premium end of the connected-TV market.
- For Roku specifically, outside demand from Facebook's network strengthens the economics of its ad-supported apps at exactly the moment its own ad business is scaling — more bidders per impression raises the value of every slot on the platform.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, Facebook moves from selling ads adjacent to video toward owning the video surface itself — it followed this test by building its own video app for Apple TV and other set-top boxes and later by talking to HBO, Showtime, and Starz about distributing their streaming services, turning the ad network into a full platform play.
- The structural endpoint is connected TV absorbing the social web's targeting model: identity linkage across devices becomes the core asset, which sets up both the commercial opportunity and the privacy-regulatory exposure that profile-to-IP matching implies.
The trend: Connected TV is becoming the arena where social platforms' user-data targeting collides with traditional television ad budgets, with device owners controlling access.