In February, I wrote a post titled “Updates Coming to Facebook Ad Audience Targeting” that covered updates to the location and demographic options in the Facebook ad interface. At the time, I still didn’t have the full picture of what Facebook would be providing in these updates. The updates have arrived, so now I’ll fill in some of the missing details.
Demographics Changes
Being able to determine which audience your ads will reach is an invaluable tool for marketers, and this update brings more granular targeting abilities across a range of areas.
Not only have the existing options been expanded, a number of new options are now available as well.
You can also target parents based on the age of their children. You can target users based on their stated political affiliations or donations. You can even target people based on when they got engaged or married.
Behaviors
In addition to the updates to demographic targeting types, Facebook has also added a setting called “Behaviors”. There is some overlap between the Broad Categories section and the Behaviors section.
You’ll want to do some testing to determine which provides a better option for targeting your audience. The Behaviors list is populated with options that seem to come from a wide variety of data sources. The U.S. Census Bureau, self-reported consumer information, online survey panels, and even warranty registration cards are listed among the references used to build these options.
This is an unprecedented set of controls for Facebook ads, and the combinations will allow advertisers to make sure their ads are being served only to the most relevant users. This could provide a boost in click through rates for ads that otherwise would have had too broad an audience. As mentioned in my previous post on the subject, now would be a good time to revisit your Facebook ads and decide if these new targeting options can provide a boost to your campaigns.
