Facebook announced the introduction of its own mobile ad network aimed at helping app developers better monetise their products, while also announcing a raft of new tools at its F8 developer conference.

The Facebook Audience Network enables third-party app developers to use its social network data to effectively target ads, and provides access to more than one million advertisers.

The network is able to “show the right ad, to the right person, at the right time” using mobile-friendly formats – banners, interstitials and customisable native units – which fit in with the design of apps, according to Facebook.

In addition, the social networking giant announced a two year “stability guarantee” for its core developer products (login, sharing, requests, SDKs, frequently-used Graph API endpoints), meaning previous versions will be supported following updates.

API versioning, meanwhile, gives developers more control over upgrading different instances of apps to use the latest platform features. The company said its platform now supports half a trillion API requests per day.

New tools to encourage user engagement were also introduced. These include a Like button for users to like content within iOS apps and mobile notifications suggesting users download apps if they sign in on a website using their Facebook credentials.

Facebook Login, which allows users to sign into their favourite apps without having to remember another password, has been tweaked to give users more control over the personal information they share with apps.

Apps that use Facebook Login will continue to access a user’s public profile, friend list, and email address, but anything beyond that will now be subject to a Login Review. A new design also gives users control who sees information posted onto Facebook via third party apps.

Anonymous Login has also been introduced so users can log into apps using their Facebook credentials without sharing any of their personal information from the social network.

FbStart, an initiative to help developers to build successful businesses from their apps, was also unveiled. The programme includes access to various developer resources, tools and services from other companies and invitations to useful events.