Facebook Will Soon Leverage Your Non-Facebook Web & Mobile Activity In Advertiser Targeting

Facebook Ads are about to become a much more lucrative commodity to marketers. Today’s Ads changes not only helped users understand why they were seeing ads, but will also allow Advertisers to target users who’ve taken desktop and mobile actions off of Facebook itself.

This means that a user who has searched for running sneakers on the web (or on a mobile app) will have the ability to be targeted with Facebook ads. The combination of demographic options along with these off-site interactions will be targeting gold for advertisers. The exact example that Facebook give for this type of ad is as follows:

Let’s say that you’re thinking about buying a new TV, and you start researching TVs on the web and in mobile apps. We may show you ads for deals on a TV to help you get the best price or other brands to consider. And because we think you’re interested in electronics, we may show you ads for other electronics in the future, like speakers or a game console to go with your new TV.

The amazing aspect of this for advertisers is that you won’t have to guess at your customer and persona psychographics, they’ll be able to target based on their actions. Until now, advertisers would have to guess at the personality traits to come up with specific demographic and interest settings to target someone that may be looking to hire a Realtor. Now you’ll be able to use actions like their visits to specific home search sites and mobile apps to target – no guesswork required.

The current Facebook Interest targeting is great, but it wasn’t perfect as users would have to take part in that action on Facebook. While something like basketball is something that may be shared as in interest traditionally, the harder, more niche topics (like real estate) don’t see as much social action. This targeting bridges the gap as it gives advertisers the ability to target users interested in a topic that they’d never share on Facebook. That’s powerful.

Of course users can opt-out of this type of targeting by heading over to the Digital Advertising Alliance opt-out. To learn more see the full Ads post and also the post catered to Facebook users.

About The Author

Greg Finn

Greg Finn is the Director of Marketing for Cypress North, a company that provides world-class social media and search marketing services and web & application development. He has been in the Internet marketing industry for 10+ years and specializes in Digital Marketing. You can also find Greg on Twitter (@gregfinn) or LinkedIn.