Yesterday, Facebook rolled out new updates to its ad targeting features which make it easier for advertisers to find very specific groups of consumer audiences.
The new targeting functions have four categories, location, demographic, interest and behaviors. Here’s how advertisers can use each one of them.
Location:
You can now get really granular about the specific locations you want to target as an advertiser. Facebook allows you to choose where your ad gets shown with a combination of geographies. You can choose combinations of countries, cities and states, or choose to exclude specific areas such as certain zipcodes, or cities within a state. This is really effective for small businesses with brick-and-mortar stores, looking to alert potential consumers within a five-mile radius, for example.
Demographic:
It’s not just age or location, your relationship status marks you as a demographic as well. Facebook allows businesses to target sales to newlyweds, or get as specific as people married within the last three or 6 months. No news on whether you can target people who’ve just broken up (with tubs of ice cream??) but I’m sure it’s entirely possible.
Interest:
Previously, advertisers could target people based on the pages they liked, but that wasn’t entirely accurate, given that some people just click on the page “like” button as a favor to a friend or relative. But with new targeting features, advertisers can reach out to people based on things they actually like to talk about, and are engaged in, such as baseball, The Oscars, etc.
Behavior:
It only makes sense to sell things to people based on the stuff they’ve already bought or are interested in buying. Facebook will allow marketers expanded ad targeting capabilities based on interests, offline shopping activity, and current purchases. Just visited Amazon? Expect to see plenty more ads not just from Amazon, but its competitors pop up in your timeline.
