Up until now, I haven’t been enthusiastic about Facebook advertising. For a variety of reasons, it seemed like a money pit for brand advertisers, with the deck stacked against direct marketers. A couple recent developments are changing that:
1) Lookalike Audiences, which lets Facebook advertisers target people who are similar to their own buyers. Here’s how it works: Using Facebook’s Custom Audiences feature, an advertiser uploads their customers’ email addresses, which Facebook uses to create a profile of the advertiser’s best customers. Based on that data, advertisers can target ads to new prospects who are similar to existing customers.
2) Partner Categories. Until recently, Facebook targeting options were limited to information that Facebook users provided, such as location, gender, age, and relationship status. Facebook recently started working with Acxiom, Datalogix and Epsilon to overlay data – without sharing any personally identifiable information — about users’ activity online, outside Facebook. That includes transactional data, making it possible to target people who, say … buy gardening products online! That’s a game changer in my book.
Combine these new targeting options with the fact that recommended costs per click start much lower than I remember them being a couple years ago, and I’m certainly taking another look at Facebook advertising for my clients. How about you?
If you’re interested in finding out more, here are links to information about Lookalike Audiences and Partner Categories.
