The Real Reason Advertisers Will Love Facebook 'Home' Phones: Permanent Logins (FB)

The most surprising part of Facebook's launch of "Home" for Android phones was when CEO Mark Zuckerberg admitted, "There are no ads in this yet, I'm sure that one day there will be."

That was a shock because the basis of Home is that the app takes over your phone's homescreen, displaying big bright photos from your friends that would normally appear in your Facebook News Feed. Ads appear there too, right now.

But the idea of picking up your phone and seeing an ad on the home screen — instead of an adorable pic of your girlfriend's French bulldog — seems like user-experience suicide.

In fact, the idea of ads on the home screen is probably NOT the most important aspect of Home for marketers.

• Scroll to the bottom of this story for advertisers' reactions to Facebook Home.
  

Rather, it's the way that Home potentially creates an audience of permanently logged-in users who will become easier to target across devices.

For some time, Facebook has essentially been solving, almost by default, one of the trickiest problems in digital advertising: How to figure out who's who when users stop using their desktops and switch for a moment to their phones. Advertisers would love to be able to pull off cross-device targeting for the obvious reason that if you search for shoes on your laptop, and then look at your phone, it would be cool to be able to serve an ad onto your phone offering you a discount on shoes.

The problem is that the mobile phone environment lacks the abundance of cookies — bits of tracking code that your web browser triggers — that there is on the desktop web.

Facebook solves this problem because most users tend not to log out of Facebook once they've logged in. As long as they stay logged in, they become targetable, anonymous Facebook users wherever else they go on the web.

Of course, almost nobody ever logs out of the Facebook app on their phone, either. So it's potentially a lot easier for Facebook to know it's you as you move from device to device. (All targeting is done anonymously, by the way. The advertisers don't literally know you're Joe Smith; rather they'll know that you're one of hundreds or thousands of males interested in shoes who are also Facebook users.)

What Home achieves is to make Facebook the main user interface for the operating system of the phone. Facebook becomes your main home screen and your main messaging service. Home users will almost never log out.

And that's what advertisers really want: A permanently logged in, targetable audience.

If Facebook has any sense at all it will NOT automatically display ads to users on the Home screens. Rather, it will only show ads to users who have affirmatively opted in to receive updates in Home from advertisers of their choice.

I can't see myself wanting to see ads from Walmart on Home, for instance, but I might be tempted to allow ads from the restaurants near my house to reach me so I can know when they have offers and discounts.

Advertisers are, indeed, already salivating. Here are the reactions from two of Facebook's biggest ad buyers:

TBG Digital CEO Simon Mansell tells us:

"[Home] will be great for all those Facebook addicts and likely increase usage from them ... for advertisers, three things matter: photos, photos, photos — more evidence that pictures tell a thousand words with the image-based integration on the home screen."

AdParlor CEO Hussein Fazal says:

"The ability to double-click to "like" a post will effectively create more stories and build more data in the ever-powerful Facebook open graph. The more users are engaged with Facebook  – the more information they will create and share – and that results in more information that marketers will be able to leverage to target their advertising."

Robin Grant, global managing director at We Are Social:

"The most exciting development for advertisers is Facebook’s potential to use Home to keep track of a consumer’s location. Combine this with the Chat Heads and notifications features and the social network could deliver consumers location relevant and timely commercial messages."

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What It's Like To Share A Stranger's Home

ALL WE KNOW of Maya S. is the back of her head. Her thumbnail indicates she is blonde with a bun and a floral-print shirt. There are no photographs of her face in the apartment even though it’s otherwise lived-in, cozy. Just as her Airbnb ad described it. When I borrow a pair of mittens that hang from her coatrack, I hope to whomever that she doesn’t accidentally catch me wearing them around the neighborhood, masquerading as Maya S. on the cobbled streets of Copenhagen.

We touch other things around the apartment too, not just the mittens: a DVD set of My So-Called Life, knit blankets she hadn’t left out for our use, shampoos and conditioners in languages we can’t read. We flip through her coffeetable books and watch her copy of Party Monster during an unanticipated snowstorm. I marvel over the magnetic strip on her kitchen wall that holds all of her gravity-defying knives, and once I use her shoddy internet connection to email her: “How much for the mirrored Michael Jackson Bad magnet?” She writes back, “I’m glad you like it, but I love it too much to sell. Sorry!” I love it too, and am also sorry.

Maya S. has a shower I would never think to call a shower. Here, there are no glass doors or mounted showerheads. Instead, it goes like this: Enter the tile-floored bathroom. Unfold the shower curtain — which hangs from a circular rod on the ceiling — until both the door and the toilet are hidden from view. Stand in front of the sink, where you stood earlier to wash your hands and where you’ll stand later to apply your makeup. Find the handheld showerhead, which dangles limply from the wall. Apply water as needed. Our first few days, we consult with one another on how to best avoid drowning Maya’s foreign elixirs and spare toilet paper rolls but soon it becomes intuitive, like how else would one shower?

We share Maya’s life, even though we’ve never met her.

Many things go this way — lighting the stove, restarting the wireless router, making the coffee. There is no abundance of empty outlets; when we need one we have to be very particular about what deserves to be unplugged and what doesn’t. But by Day 3, we know where the wireless signal is strongest (the intersection where hallway meets living room, on the right-hand side) and which room is most suitable for blow-drying our hair (the bedroom).

Coming home after a long day of walking and shopping and drinking becomes a routine we quickly adapt to. This key opens that gate, and this one opens the door facing the courtyard, and this last one lets us into our third-story apartment. Her third-story apartment, we know, but for now it’s ours. We have rituals: Take off the shoes, turn on the lights, adjust the heat. Then we put away our bounty — dishware shoved in suitcases, goat cheese thrown in the refrigerator, bottle of wine in hand. One of us opens the wine and readies the DVD player while the other cooks, then we gather on the couch and screen the night’s selection from Maya’s collection of DVDs. Each of us has our own blanket to warm our feet.

The two of us are used to living together, just not here. In college we shared bedrooms and once we got places of our own, we shared our couches with one another — hers in Chicago, mine in Brooklyn. In Copenhagen, we share morning coffee and long walks along Nyhavn and beers in dark taverns where everyone smokes indoors. We share meals of cheese and bread, falafel from the restaurant down the street, and train rides we don’t know how to pay for. We share the not-shower and the floating knives and the coffeetable books. We share Maya’s life, even though we’ve never met her.

We do try to meet her, though. Maya tells us she is staying in Copenhagen, in someone else’s home, while we have our visit. By Day 5, we have stared at her bookshelves and closets and lotions long enough to decide that we like her and want to experience her Denmark. We ask her out to a drink and she politely declines, referring us to a bar she likes in the neighborhood instead. We drink in every bar on our street before we fly back to our respective lives.

A year later, I will search deep in my inbox for information on Maya’s apartment that was ours for 10 days and find that it is no longer listed. Perhaps she’s moved or grown tired of sharing her life with people like us.

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Mike McLelland, Kaufman County District Attorney, Found Dead With Wife In Texas Home

KAUFMAN, Texas -- A sheriff's deputy says authorities are investigating the deaths of a North Texas county district attorney and his wife who were found dead in a home.

Kaufman County Sheriff's Office spokesman Lt. Justin Lewis said Saturday that the county District Attorney, Mike McLelland, and his wife, Cynthia, were found dead in a home in an unincorporated part of the county. Authorities have blocked off the street where the couple's last known address is located.

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A. Barton Hinkle on Journalists' Licensure Hypocrisy

After Hurricane Sandy struck last
fall, “Today” reporter Jeff Rossen did an exposé on how some
contractors were “preying on” homeowners. How? By performing repair
work without the proper licenses. Rossen found several contractors
who lacked home-improvement licenses, but only one consumer who had
been taken advantage of—and that was two months before Sandy
struck. His big story, writes A. Barton Hinkle, boiled down to the
fact that some Sandy-related tree removal and home repair work was
carried out without prior government permission.

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CASE SHILLER: Home Prices Rise 8.08% Beating Expectations

The S&P/Case-Shiller home price index for January was up 8.08 percent year-over-year. This beat expectations for a 7.85 percent rise. Click here to refresh > On a month-over-month basis, home prices were up 1.02 percent, beating expectations of a 0.8 percent rise. The December number was reading was revised up to 0.92 percent, from the initial reading of a 0.88 percent MoM rise. Both the 10 and 20-city composite indices had their highest increases since summer 2006. "This marks the highest increase since the housing bubble burst," according to David Blitzer Chairman of the Index Committee at S&P Dow Jones Indices. Economists have been cranking up their home price forecasts. Bank of America and Capital Economics now expect home prices to rise 8 percent in 2013. Bank of America's Michelle Meyer and Justin Borst say that a "positive feedback loop has begun". They argue that when people think home prices are rising, they think they will keep doing so and credit conditions will improve, and this increases demand for homes. Here is the trajectory of home prices since 1988: SEE ALSO:&MICHELLE MEYER: Here Are The 4 Hot Housing Topics You Need To Watch > Please follow Money Game on Twitter and Facebook.Join the conversation about this story »

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CHART OF THE DAY: That's What A Housing Recovery Looks Like

This beautiful chart from today's Case-Shiller house price report shows that housing has made a comeback. Not only were prices around the country up over 8%, but the year-over-year improvement continues to accelerate nicely. Both the 10 and 20-city composite indices had their highest increases since summer 2006. "This marks the highest increase since the housing bubble burst," according to David Blitzer Chairman of the Index Committee at S&P Dow Jones Indices. While declining inventory has helped support home prices, housing analysts have said housing is also seeing a "positive feedback loop" i.e. when people think home prices are rising, they believe they will keep doing so, and credit conditions will improve, and this increases demand for homes. Of course some warn, that home prices are being driven by investor demand and not by more traditional homebuyers. Read more on the details of the report, see here. SEE ALSO:&MICHELLE MEYER: Here Are The 4 Hot Housing Topics You Need To Watch > Please follow Money Game on Twitter and Facebook.Join the conversation about this story »

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Don't Freak Out If You See A B-52 Bomber Targeting Your Home

The following short video shows a&B-52 Stratofortress&during a standard training mission of the War Week, an exercise which incorporates Aerial Refueling, Weapons Tactics and High Altitude Maneuvering. The&iconic bomber&can be seen taking off, cruising, releasing simulated bombs, taking fuel midair from a&KC-135 Stratotanker&refueler and landing at Barksdale Air Force Base, Lousiana. As some viewers have noticed with a bit of concern on Youtube, the B-52 used what appears to be the garden of a civil house as the target of its simulated bombing run. Nothing special, to be honest: in order to improve the skills they may need one day against actual ones, aircrews of U.S. and foreign attack planes can use civilian buildings, infrastructures located inside or outside training areas and gunnery ranges. Buildings, bridges, highway passages can be used as simulated targets that a B-52 on a training sortie has to identify and attack&using&cruise missiles,&GPS&guided weapons, unguided munitions, mines and so on. Until they drop an actual bomb on them, civilians should not be too worried to be in the&B-52′s Radar Navigator crosshairs. More than 60 years after it started to fly with the U.S. Air Force, the B-52 is still being upgraded. The heavy bomber fleet will soon be equipped with the Sniper pod, that will enable a better integration with ground forces and provide improved precision in laser guided bomb air strikes. “This pod gives a faster response time to our targets. What would normally take me 30 to 40 button presses in five minutes now only takes me a few seconds to actually target and drop munitions,”&said Capt. Ryan Allen, 20th Bomb Squadron radar navigation instructor. Furthermore, the pod has a greater visibility range and can feed ground troops, to let them see what the Sniper pod sees. The Sniper pod already equips fast&combat jets&as well as the&B-1 Lancer,&and with a software upgrade called Net-T (network tactical) it can be turned into a wireless router that can provide connectivity to ground troops on the battlefield.