You could do if you want to customize an ad on Facebook to a single user out of its universe.
Trying to pitch your breakfast and a fashionable bed to a “trendy mom” who is 44-years-old and lives in Seattle, learns conservation and is now traveling to the area of Toronto but still hasn’t booked a hotel for staying? Go a little bit ahead.
A 34-year-old owner of a cat in Madison, Wisconsin who likes Japanese food but doesn’t like pizza, interested in mail-ordering, has an anniversary in the next two months? Don’t worry.
It turns out targeting ads is nearly infinitely customizable- sometimes in a shocking way. The ads which you see might be seen tailored to you down towards the tiniest details- not only where you live and recently which website you have visited, but either you have gotten active participation in the last six months, are focused in organic food or share the characteristics with the peoples who bought a BMW a few weeks ago, even if you have never shown interest in doing so yourself.
Last year $40 billion was made by Facebook in a market of advertising, second only to Google when it comes to its share of the global market of digital advertising. This number is hoped to grow sharply this year even with a recent decision of stopping the work with outside data brokers to help target ads of advertisers situated on things like purchase of an offline or the history of the credit.
Some of the ways which the advertisers can make you target through a Facebook:
Well, by now you may have known that Facebook uses things like your age, interest and other information to help advertisers to reach you. And there is the stuff which your friends do and like- the idea being that it is a good indicator of what you may do and like.
So if there are any of your friends who liked the Facebook page of New Yorkers, you might see ads for the magazine on your Facebook feed.
But that is just the iceberg’s tip. Advertisers and Facebook can also conclude stuff about you, based on the things which you share by your wish. For example, Facebook classifies users into a “racial affinity” which is based on what it supposes might be their nationality or racial impact.
Through music or TV shows which you have liked, you might guess it. Usually, Facebook is wrong- and while removing it is possible, you cannot change it. No “racial affinity” option is there for whites.
While advertisers may want to target people of a specific nationality because there are enough good reasons, in 2016 this became the problem for Facebook when ProPublica found that it lets the advertisers ban particular groups from seeing their ads. This is legal when it comes to employment ads and housing.
In 2017, Facebook was notified that it was blocking the advertisers temporarily with the capacity to target based on ethnic relationship, along with other things such as LGBT affinity or religion. Those groups can still be targeted by the advertisers- just don’t ban them. Facebook, which had said it is doing an investigation of how the features can be abused, did not say when the block would be lifted by it.
While some of the advertisers want to reach a huge mass of people, others like more particular targeting. As Facebook has described in a guide for advertisers, it is possible to clear an audience of an ad on things like what apps people use, what they post on their timelines, demographics such as age, as they click, gender and location and their network connection or even the mobile device they use.
Based on the information, advertisers can include or even exclude classification such as owner of the home, “trendy moms,” people who recently moved, people who are interested in cooking, or conservatives, for example.
That said, Facebook alerts the advertisers not to make their audience too limited by being overly certain, which can make the ads less effective- since few people will only see them.
An ad offering which is called “custom audiences” lets the advertisers target anyone who has recently bought materials from them or has visited their websites. Anyone who has downloaded their app or shared an email address can also be targeted easily by them. So, if you use Netflix, you may have seen an ad on Facebook for the latest TV shows which you might find interesting. Or, if you have provided your email address when you have bought shoes from Land’s Ends, you may get an ad for an upcoming sale of shoes. It is because Facebook has your email address also.
Then “lookalike audiences” are there. There are some people who are similar to the customer base of existing businesses but actually are not a customer themselves. For reaching people in different countries, this can help the advertisers.
Firstly, by uploading the customers’ data through the “custom audiences” feature, advertisers can easily use this tool. Then, Facebook’s algorithms look for people who are similar to them. Additionally, Facebook pixel- a piece of a code that will track what people do while they are off of Facebook, can also be used by the advertisers by installing it on their site.
Recently, Facebook has launched a new type of ad; this allows businesses to target the people who have shown interest in them. It uses “retargeting”- that sometimes- irritating way that a bag which you have looked at on a website can follow you on the internet in any case of whether you like to buy it. Dynamic ads, though, go a further step and know if you were only browsing or if you put that bag in your online shopping cart, and with 10% of coupon, it may poke you.
In recent earnings calls, as a Chief Operating Officer Sandberg has explained, dynamic ads let Holiday Inn target people who have searched for hotels on its website but hadn’t booked yet. The ads which the user of a Facebook had seen had a video personalized to the places and dates they have searched for.
The result: according to Sandberg, three times the return has got by the hotel chain on what it spent on these ads than on their previous ad movement.
