The world’s largest social network has found a new home. Launched earlier this month, Facebook’s latest product is moving into the Android market and quickly catching the attention of consumers and marketers alike. Meet Facebook Home. It’s not a phone, it’s not an operating system, but rather a family of applications that work together to deliver an entirely new mobile experience. Facebook Home puts your friends at the heart of your mobile device, fully immersing you with the network through its personalized interface.

Despite the fact that Facebook Home is currently only available for Android devices, the product has exceeded 500,000 downloads since being launched just over a week ago. This immediate success has caught the attention of the marketing community, sparking great interest for how Home will one day offer valuable advertising opportunities. “There are no ads in this yet, I’m sure that one day there will be,” said Facebook Founder Mark Zuckerberg. So what exactly does this new product mean for us as marketers and how can we prepare? Let’s take a closer look at the opportunities that lie ahead:

Home Screen Notifications – Facebook Home’s signature feature is its ability to push content directly to the home screen of a user’s smart phone. Each time an individual ’wakes up’ his phone, the product pushes recent stories from the user’s timeline to the home screen of the phone. This is known as the Cover Feed. If opened up to advertisers, access to this distraction-free real estate would offer a valuable opportunity to connect with key audiences. Coupled with the power of geo-location and crowd sourcing, these home screen notifications have the power to become a truly targeted marketing tool.

Increased Engagement – In addition to capturing your attention with the new cover feed, Facebook Home offers several intuitive features to build user engagement. Hussein Fazal, CEO at AdParlor explains the value of this growth stating that, “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.” The new product replicates Instagram’s ‘tap twice to like’ feature making it intuitive for users to interact with their friends’ posts. It also offers a new ‘chat head’ capability that integrates Facebook’s messaging system in a strategic way that displays notifications without taking away from the central content.

Advanced Targeting Capabilities – As Fazal explained, Home’s ability to build engagement with users will provide marketers and advertisers with new data that will allow them to deliver more targeted messaging and campaigns. One reason for this is that as users become more engaged and increase the frequency of their interactions, they are likely to expose more information about themselves. This includes revealing geolocation and behavioral data via Facebook check in as well as data pertaining to general interest through page likes. Another major factor in being able to obtain new information is the ability for Facebook to track your mobile browsing behavior as a result of constantly being logged into Home. As long as a user remains logged in, he becomes a targetable, anonymous Facebook user wherever else you go on the web.

While Facebook Home is certainly in its early stages, it seems clear that the product is off to a strong start. Home has already established an international presence and is exploring the opportunity to move beyond Android devices in order to support the massive iPhone population. As these changes come into play and improve upon Home’s already powerful advertising potential, it’s can be stated that for marketers worldwide, there’s no place like Facebook Home.