Facebook Makes Targeted Ads Easier For Marketers

Facebook plans on making marketing much more easier for companies. It has announced that its custom audiences tool, which was released back in September to let marketers create more relevant ads for users, has received an update that will help marketers to create better, more targeted ads to attract users with. This tool will combine the help of 4 companies, Datalogix, Epsilon, Acxiom, and BlueKai, to help businesses with their online/offline marketing.

Those companies will dig through data from loyalty programs that users signup for. They will pair the data from the users' shopping history with the information on their Facebook profiles to find their interests. Facebook's custom audiences tool also lets businesses target more specific categories to find their target audience. There will be categories like "soda drinkers" or categories for people who bought a specific car model. The companies assure users that marketers will not have access to their private information.

Facebook provides two successful examples of its marketing campaigns. The first is Castle Auto Group. They saw a 24x return on their ad costs when they used a combination of Facebook offers and custom audience categories to deliver ads to both a targeted audience along with their existing audience. The second is Kingnet, a game developer based in Hong Kong, who saw over a 40% decrease in cost-per-installs for its video game. It was able to do so by appealing to a targeted audience rather than random Facebook users.

This new change in marketing strategies should be very beneficial to Facebook's ad revenue. Facebook,however, wants to assure users that their private information will not be given to marketers. It also says that users will be able to opt-out of ads that they do not like via the ad's control menu or through the help center. Users will also be able to give feedback on the targeted ads.

[via Facebook]