Ad Targeting on Facebook: Know Your Options

Social media moves fast—and we’re not just talking about the sheer volume of conversations. Social platforms are constantly making changes, which can make a marketer’s head spin. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest and Google+ each made multiple changes in 2013 that will help vastly improve your social media marketing. Over the next week, we’ll be featuring one or two important updates from each social network and detail how you can use them to your advantage this year and beyond. We’ll also provide real-world examples of how brands are utilizing these new features for inspiration on how you can too.

Ad Targeting Options on Facebook: The Details

Lookalike Audiences

• Enables marketers to reach new audiences who share similar characteristics to their Custom Audiences. Example: You’ve uploaded a client list to create a Custom Audience called “current clients.” Facebook will analyze that list and create a new one that is optimized based on either reach or similarity.
• Optimizing for reach will find more people, but the match may not be as precise as when you optimize for similarity.

Objective-Based Ad Buying

• Choose your objective (i.e. Website Conversions, Page Likes, etc) and Facebook will recommend an appropriate ad type and place your ad where it sees it performing best.
• You also have the option to choose the exact location yourself (desktop News Feed, right-hand column, etc).
• The Ads Manager tool has also been updated, allowing advertisers to measure the results of their ad campaign and more specifically, if the objective has been met.

Third-Party Data

• Facebook partnered with four major data providers—Epsilon, Acxiom, Datalogix and BlueKai—to create new targeting options to advertisers.
• The data partners provide information like browsing history, e-newsletters lists, loyalty card transactions and more to Facebook, which then anonymously matches the data with user profiles in order to create targeted categories based on purchase habits and other characteristics.

How to Use the New Targeting Options for Ads:

There are so many ways to reach the right audience with your ads. Take the time to carefully curate your lists and upload them into Facebook so you can target existing customers, prospects and new prospects with the right characteristics.

• Create different ads for every audience. Make sure the content or offer addresses their particular interests or needs. The more relevant the ad is to someone, the more likely they are to click. And make sure to switch up the creative often! If they keep seeing the same ad over and over, they’ll stop clicking.
• Customize ads for their location. A desktop ad should click through to your full website; a mobile ad should click through to your mobile site.

Focus on Mobile

In Facebook’s Q3 earnings call, it disclosed that 48 percent of users are only accessing the platform from mobile and that its mobile ad revenue represented 49% of its total revenue. Also, Facebook activity accounts for one of every five minutes spent on mobile in the U.S. Do you think Facebook cares about mobile? Count on it—and count on Facebook steering you towards mobile ads.

Before you start with mobile ads make sure all of your landing pages or anywhere else you’ll be driving people is optimized for all devices. Do your best to remove possible barriers like too many fields since mobile users will not devote the time to filling them all out. Efficiency is key—only ask for what you really need.

Looking for more tips on planning your Facebook strategy? Download the recording to our recent webinar featuring predictions, insights and action plans from Facebook experts Dennis Yu and Dragos Ilinca.