First up on the agenda is a new kind of advertising targeting, one that will allow brands to market to the social network’s users based on purchases made in brick-and-mortar stores. This, Facebook executives hope, will make the ads seen on Facebook more familiar and therefore more effective.

The company made similar efforts previously — linking data from customer relationship management programs provided by marketing technology and services companies Epsilon, Acxiom (NASDAQ:ACXM), and Datalogix. But now the company is matching data gathered by these firms through shopper loyalty programs to individual Facebook profiles using the telephone numbers and email addresses provided with loyalty card applications.

Facebook partnered with Datalogix last fall to determine whether members exposed to the ads on the social network end up purchasing those products in stores. If this hypothesis proves correct, the new method will enable brands to target users who have bought their products in recent months. For example, if one teenager purchased a can of Pepsi in the past month, the company PepsiCo (NYSE:PEP) will be allowed to target those consumers with advertisements for the soft drink…
But Facebook knows that much of its growth, especially its mobile growth is coming from emerging markets where such an advertising strategy is not possible because such extensive knowledge of customers’ purchasing habits is unavailable. But the social network has implemented what might be the next best solution: giving users in 14 different countries access to “free or discounted data access” to Facebook Messenger, a plan aimed at ensuring that they spend more time on the social network and see more ads as a result.

Many of the approximately 18 mobile carriers who partnered with the company on the deal operate in emerging markets.

With this deal, Facebook not only acknowledged that its messaging platform is extremely popular — the social network’s blog update that announced the free or discounted data service also boasted that three out of four Facebook users send at least one message per month  — but the company also gave an indication of how greatly mobile is affecting its business.

The most recent figures, from a filing made with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, show that 102 million users accessed Facebook solely through mobile devices in June. These numbers are not a sign that members are increasingly abandoning the desktop platform, but that more and more of Facebook’s growth is coming from what analysts call mobile-first areas, like India and Indonesia. However, it is also true that many users in developed countries are spending more time on the company’s mobile platform as well, hence the revenue problems that have been manifested in all of the earnings reports released since the company went public.

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