Facebook plans to close LiveRail ad exchange to focus on Audience Network

Facebook is winding down LiveRail, the video ad tech business it acquired in 2014.

In 2015, LiveRail began to power ad serving for all in-app ads on the Facebook Audience Network — launched in 2014 to target ads to Facebook users in apps (and now mobile websites) beyond Facebook itself — including native video and display ads, in addition to supporting desktop advertising. However, earlier this year, Facebook announced it was closing down LiveRail’s ad-serving capabilities to focus on private marketplaces and ad mediation for native and video.

Now, it seems, Facebook Audience Network is supplanting LiveRail, according to The Wall Street Journal, which first reported the coming closure.

“We are discontinuing the LiveRail Private Exchange to focus on finding better ways for publishers to sell their ad space directly to advertisers, as well as expanding our video ad offering via Audience Network,” said a Facebook spokeswoman. “This is what many of our publishing partners told us they wanted, and we believe this will make video ads more relevant to the people who watch them.”

Just yesterday, Facebook announced that Audience Network will now expand to enable targeting of non-Facebook users on other mobile apps and websites using Custom Audiences, lookalike audiences and other targeting.

Earlier this week, Facebook confirmed it will shutter its programmatic exchange for desktop inventory, FBX, in favor of mobile and cross-device capabilities like Custom Audiences and Dynamic Ads.

The LiveRail brand name may live on in forthcoming products, the WSJ says.