In the same week that Google announced almost half of all Olympic related searches in Australia were made using mobile devices, Facebook has announced testing of a new ad unit aimed at driving installs of mobile apps.

Mobile money

Since it’s stock market floatation, Facebook has struggled to convince investors the platform is suitably monetised. As a result share prices have dipped by almost half since going public.

Of major concern has been Facebook’s inability (so far) to make much money from mobile users—an increasingly large market share. They’re hoping that’s all set to change, however, with the new Mobile Ads for Apps, unveiled in testing on the Facebook Developer blog on Wednesday.

Middlemen

The ad unit looks to raise revenue by allowing app developers the ability to advertise their iOS and Google Play apps to mobile Facebook users. With a reported 543 million of them, Facebook is looking to position itself as something of a middleman for app developers.

According to the Facebook Developer blog, in the last 30 days people have visited the Apple App Store and Google Play 146 million times from links in shown in Facebook news feeds, timelines, bookmarks and the App centre.

Clicks for cash

Like usual Facebook ads, app developers can use Facebook’s App Dashboard to choose their target audience and specify their budget. Ads then work on the familiar click-for-cash basis, where Facebook receives payment for anyone who links through to download an app from one of their mobile ads.

Attractive opportunity

As more and more social media activity (and online behaviour in general) goes mobile, Australian app developers will no doubt be smacking their lips at the prospect of directly harnessing the enormous mobile Facebook community to promote their wares.