UPDATED 08:13 EDT / SEPTEMBER 08 2012

Facebook Turns to LB Marketing, Hopes Mobile Will Turn Its Stock Around

Mobile advertising can bring Facebook’s yearly revenue to $1 billion in the next year, eventually overtaking desktop advertising revenue, said Doug Anmuth, an analyst at JP Morgan.

Anmuth thinks Facebook’s mobile advertising is working, and that will push shares to $30 a share — about 66 percent more than the battered stock price Facebook is trading at today. Anmuth, before the opening of the IPO, set the price of the stock as high as $45.

That’s not bad for a company that is frequently bashed for its inability to monetize mobile.  Facebook’s shares have been plummeting ever since it got green light to sell their stock in the market.

Facebook has accelerated the introduction of mobile advertising, and last month submitted stories for mobile platform that allows advertisers to target their campaigns based on mobile numbers and email addresses. If Anmuth’s figures are to be believed, Facebook will be generating EBITDA of $4.2 billion in 2014.

Other bankers are optimistic

Anmuth isn’t the first person to have faith in Facebook’s mobile strategy, given its strong 600 million mobile users base.

Bank of America analyst Justin Post is also optimistic about Facebook’s opportunity to drive acceleration in revenue growth from new ad formats.

“We see the success of new ad formats as paramount for the stock…[however] recent selling activity on the August lockup suggests to us the risk of future selling pressure,” said Post.

BMO Capital Markets analysts said that Wall Street sentiment for Facebook is now much worse than advertiser sentiment, but in the coming days the stock will accelerate.

“We expect investor attention to return to fundamentals after the technical challenges presented by lock-up expirations over the next six months have been absorbed by the stock,” BMO Capital Markets analysts said.

Advertising Models

In addition to the success of mobile monetization, Facebook is also looking at LBS-advertising. Facebook plans to introduce mobile advertising targeted on games and applications that consumers use on their phones.

Facebook will monitor the activities of their mobile users using Facebook Connect, which allows you to register applications, with an account Facebook. These data will be used by the company for targeting advertising, and the advertiser will pay for the installation of the application on the smartphone user.

For example, if the user regularly plays Zynga Words with Friends on the phone, Facebook will display advertising based on Zynga games. And advertiser will pay for each installation of the application on the smartphone user.

Advertisers can market to mobile applications that may be of interest to the user, analyzing the use of their existing application. Unlike paid stories, the new format will allow advertisers to take into account user preferences and activity. Facebook may charge advertisers a fee each time you install the application on the phone, and effective cost per thousand impressions may well exceed the same rate for mobile advertising.


A message from John Furrier, co-founder of SiliconANGLE:

Your vote of support is important to us and it helps us keep the content FREE.

One click below supports our mission to provide free, deep, and relevant content.  

Join our community on YouTube

Join the community that includes more than 15,000 #CubeAlumni experts, including Amazon.com CEO Andy Jassy, Dell Technologies founder and CEO Michael Dell, Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger, and many more luminaries and experts.

“TheCUBE is an important partner to the industry. You guys really are a part of our events and we really appreciate you coming and I know people appreciate the content you create as well” – Andy Jassy

THANK YOU