Facebook, in its ever-expanding attempt to take over the entire digital ad world, had been offering publishers on its Audience Network platform the ability to sell ads on their connected TV apps. That, according to Digiday, is no longer happening. The company has decided to halt its OTT television ad offerings.
In a statement to the media news site, a Facebook spokesperson confirmed the news, saying: “We worked with a small set of publishers to test monetizing their connected-TV apps with ads from Audience Network and ultimately decided not to move forward with the concept.”
This is essentially Facebook admitting that it does not have the ability or bandwidth to enter into this growing advertising market. Before, publishers were able to use Facebook’s ad network to sell ads on their own connected TV apps using some of Facebook’s inventory. But the providers of these OTT services have begun trying to crack down on new players selling ads on their platforms. Roku, specifically, has reportedly been limiting the types of third-party ads it allows–even allegedly refusing to approve ads that contain Facebook’s code.
Not only that, but it seems that Facebook also had trouble proving to its Audience Network customers that it was able to be a better OTT ad network than the other ones out there–or even the platforms themselves. With this, Facebook has apparently decided to call it quits.
This comes as Facebook’s overall digital advertising marketshare continues to fall. A recent report from Pivotal found that overall digital consumption on every Facebook platform fell by 7% this past September. Now that Facebook isn’t selling inventory on these non-Facebook OTT platforms, it seems it will have to look elsewhere for new ways to boost its ad network offerings.
You can read the full Digiday report here.
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