This post was originally published on Mashable.

Facebook is reportedly looking to open a membership option for kids younger than 13, and one analyst says doing so could help the social network in a place it's drawn criticism since its dud of an IPO - mobile strategy.

Simon Mansell is CEO of the of the Facebook advertising agency TBG Digital, which works with a long line of high-profile clients including JetBlue, Heineken and Coca-Cola.

TBG recently analysed more than 170 million Facebook ad impressions to see how ad cost-per-click (CPC) and click-through-rates (CTR) for Facebook's youngest teenage users compare with those for the rest of the site's population. CTR for users between the ages of 13 and 15 was not significantly lower than that for users above the age of 16.

But CPC, which matters much more to advertisers, was very different for the two age groups - more than twice as high for users 16 and over as for those between the ages of 13 and 15. That means it's significantly cheaper for advertisers to target younger users, even though there are fewer products to market to them.

Mansell says that data indicates that lowering Facebook's minimum age requirement would likely be beneficial to the company and its advertisers. That's an even more encouraging sign because capturing younger users - who are and will be a major part of the web's assumed mobile future - could help Facebook adapt to an internet that moves increasingly away from desktop and laptop computing.

"Definitely, younger people are more likely to open and engage with mobile ads," Mansell told Mashable in an interview.

Hedge fund manager Eric Jackson told CNBC earlier this month that Facebook will "disappear in the way that Yahoo has disappeared" by 2020, largely because it will struggle to adapt to the mobile-dominated next generation of the web.

Another recent TBG report, however, says Facebook's mobile ads are performing significantly stronger than its desktop ads, which is a very positive sign for the newly public company and its shareholders. Opening up to users younger than 13, meanwhile, could increase that sense of optimism among advertisers and shareholders. The vast majority of respondents to a Mashable poll, however, are opposed to the idea of making the network accessible to kids.

"From an advertising perspective [opening to a younger audience] would definitely help," Mansell says. "It would make a lot of sense from that perspective, but obviously they have to get around a lot of other issues surrounding that first."

Mashable is the largest independent news source covering digital culture, social media and technology.

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