Home Ad Exchange News As LiveRail Sunsets Its Ad Server, Facebook Formalizes New Buy/Sell-Side Focus

As LiveRail Sunsets Its Ad Server, Facebook Formalizes New Buy/Sell-Side Focus

SHARE:

ServerSandwiched somewhere between the smart cars and $599 headsets at CES, Facebook dropped a mini-bomb by way of its developer blog when it revealed Thursday that LiveRail – the video ad server, SSP and publisher monetization platform it acquired in 2014 – would exit the ad-serving business.

Facebook purports the move will allow it to focus on more lucrative areas of business, including its data-laden Facebook Audience Network (FAN), which clocked $1 billion in ad spend in Q4, the first time Facebook has released these figures.

LiveRail’s ad server pullback will affect fewer than 100 customers, who will be migrated onto “alternative” ad servers or other publisher offerings from Facebook, though it’s not clear yet what that entails.

When Facebook acquired LiveRail in July 2014, a year after purchasing Atlas from Microsoft, some industry spectators viewed it as an attempt to build out a publisher display network.

But of late Atlas has been positioned more as Facebook’s people-based measurement system and ad server for buy-side clients, while its efforts on the supply side focused on forging more direct relationships with publishers.

As such, Facebook’s LiveRail kicked out third-party video resellers last fall in the name of shoring up more premium supply in its marketplace. 

“Taking out ad networks made sense in this context, because it avoids any channel conflict [around] ad networks selling against them using their own tech and simplifies anything they might want to do with data,” noted John Nardone, CEO of the ad server Flashtalking and former CEO of [x+1]. “It sounds like they are formalizing that split – Atlas, buy side. LiveRail, publisher side.”

But why is Facebook’s LiveRail dropping its ad server when its private marketplace business appears healthy? The platform powers private exchanges for about 75 publishers and broadcasters globally, including Hulu, Dailymotion and A+E Networks.

For one, the ad-serving space is crowded and some say it’s already commoditized.

“The future of digital advertising is programmatic via PMPs/Deal IDs, not ad serving, [so] … it makes sense that Facebook would take this step,” noted Craig Berlingo, VP of product and publisher platforms for Tremor Video. “This is a huge shift for LiveRail, who was an ad server at its core, but not necessarily for Facebook who has had its eye on programmatic for some time now.”

Private marketplace partners, including A+E, already use platforms like Comcast’s FreeWheel as its ad server. Conversely, DoubleClick and Sizmek (MediaMind) are pretty well entrenched in digital ad-serving, while connected TV operators like Roku layer in interactive ads through partners such as Innovid, which focuses on video ad-serving for brands and agencies, or BrightLine.

Subscribe

AdExchanger Daily

Get our editors’ roundup delivered to your inbox every weekday.

And the signs already pointed toward LiveRail’s remake. At its developer conference F8 last spring, Facebook paraded its new mobile network, which translated age and gender targets common in video and TV planning – the hallmark of LiveRail – into in-app and native ad formats.

A few months later, in August, Facebook rolled out more formats for FAN, including video, dynamic product ads and carousel ads.

“Video tends to drive a higher performance for a publisher,” a Facebook product manager told AdExchanger at the time. “We anticipate over time that video will be a growing share of the Audience Network.”

With Facebook seemingly shifting its focus to FAN, and applying its own data to third-party publishers and apps, upgrading a video ad server rooted in desktop to meet newer technical requirements just might not have been the big priority.

Must Read

Chris Mufarrige, director, Bureau of Consumer Protection, FTC

FTC Consumer Protection Chief: No Easy Answers On Privacy, ‘Only Trade-Offs’

Privacy isn’t black-and-white, says the FTC’s Chris Mufarrige, promising evidence-driven consumer protection cases under the Trump administration.

How Encryption Keys Could Resolve The TID Furor

Rather than sharing universal TIDs that any DSP or curator can access, Raptive says publishers should instead share encrypted TIDs with an encryption key provided only to trusted demand-side partners.

Clear Channel Brings Mid-Flight Measurement To Its OOH Network

Clear Channel will provide advertisers weekly, mid-flight reports on outcomes driven by its inventory in order to bring OOH measurement closer to the speed of digital.

Privacy! Commerce! Connected TV! Read all about it. Subscribe to AdExchanger Newsletters
FTC Commissioner Mark Meador speaking at the NAD's annual conference in Washington, DC on Sept. 16, 2025. (Photo: Brian O'Doherty)

FTC Commissioner Mark Meador: ‘No Human Society Can Long Survive Without Consumer Trust’

Keeping American kids safe in what FTC Commissioner Mark Meador calls “an increasingly complex and fast-paced technological environment” is a top priority for the agency.

Comic: "Deal ID, please."

Amazon Expands Its Programmatic Integration With SiriusXM

On Tuesday, Amazon DSP announced an expanded integration with satellite radio company SiriusXM.

Rembrand merges with Spaceback

Omar Tawakol Is Merging His AI Startup Rembrand With Spaceback

Rembrand announced that it’s merging with creative automation startup Spaceback to build a unified AI-powered platform for “content-based” CTV, digital video and display.