Facebook’s Ad Exhchange

In June 2012, FBX began public testing. It let Facebook advertisers target users based on cookies dropped by websites they’d visited. If you almost booked a flight to Hawaii but didn’t pull the trigger, FBX could hit you with ads for discounted Hawaii flights and hotels the next time you visited Facebook. Facebook finally knew your purchase intent, and could sell it for high rates that companies would pay out of budgets reserved for retargeting.

How FBX Works Mid near Done

“It is working very well. No question it’s been a success for Facebook,” Garcia tells me. And ad platform data and interviews back him up. The FBX ads Antonio willed into being delivered big returns and had ad platforms betting their businesses on Facebook.

Yet we’re not seeing Facebook doubling down on FBX as I would have expected, and perhaps that’s the real reason Garcia is heading out. Right now, FBX doesn’t work at all on mobile, which seems like a huge miss considering that’s now where the majority of Facebook’s engagement is. FBX retargeting data can’t be combined with standard Facebook biographical targeting, either. There are privacy concerns with that, but if Facebook was really committed to FBX, I think they would have been hammered out by now.

Read the full article here at techcrunch.com.