According to a new Financial Times (FT) report, with the popular social network Facebook evidently looking to gain an additional source of revenue before its imminent IPO, ads may start appearing on Facebook apps for the iPhone, iPad, and Android devices as soon as early March.

The FT report, citing unnamed sources ‘in the know’ of the proceedings at Facebook, said that the social network – which already started running sponsored stories in December 2011 - is apparently through with the initial discussions on the proposals from advertising agencies.

As a result, users of Facebook apps on the iPhone, iPad and Android will have featured stories appearing in the mobile news feed — quite like the promoted tweets on Twitter — amalgamated in posts from their friends.

With one of the sources also informing FT that Facebook intends giving incentives to advertisers for linking within the social network, instead of directing the users off-site, it is being speculated that a marketers-centric event may likely be held by Facebook on February 29, in New York. The event may witness announcements of new ways in which the marketers can use the social network.

Earlier, hinting at a possible move to add advertisement to Facebook apps, the social network’s paperwork for its February 1 IPO filing had a mention of the fact that the company was looking at ‘mobile’ as a potential revenue source, warning that the lack of mobile revenue could be rather problematic!