Facebook Isn't Interested in Mobile Ads?

Has Facebook given up on mobile? A spokesman told a crowd of reporters at a London conference Wednesday that the social network isn't concentrating on mobile advertising at all.

What, you might ask, does Facebook not grasp about the idea that mobile advertising will account for $1.5 billion by 2013? Or that Google spent $750 million to buy Admob to get at Apple's iPhone?

Apparently Facebook is biting. From the Guardian (U.K.) article quoting Facebook head of mobile partnerships Fergal Walker:

"We are not focused on advertising on mobile at all." Virtual currency and payments? "We're not really focused on world domination or something regarding currency. It's not in our minds. Our minds are very focused on the social web, building basic social experiences on the web with partners."

Walker later said that Facebook was being tentative about bombarding users with ads on its fledgling mobile app. While we can see that Facebook is not trying to kill its golden goose of 500 million users by repelling them from mobile with ads, it's a bit hard to swallow that such a savvy company like Facebook has no mobile ad strategy. Facebook's caring about its users has almost always been about how it could package them and their information to advertisers.

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