Facebook Experiments With Ads Targeting People’s Interests
Erick Schonfeld
51 comments »
The big promise of advertising on social networks has always been the ability to target members by their own self-proclaimed interests and demographics. Facebook, as expected, has quietly taken a step in that direction with its Facebook Flyers ads (these are sidebar advertising widgets that Facebook still controls, as opposed to the majority of ad inventory on Facebook that falls under its deal with Microsoft). In terms of revenues, these Flyers probably don’t amount to much yet, but this is one Faecbook experiment worth keeping an eye on.
As first reported on AllFacebook, the Flyers let you target by country, city, gender, age range, political views, relationship status, education level, workplace affiliation, or any keyword in a person’s stated interests. It’s that last option that could be really powerful. For instance, simply putting in different keywords into the Facebook Flyers ad-targeting page reveals that of the 19,951,900 Facebook members in the U.S., 101,000 are into rock climbing, 411,000 are into cooking, and 706,160 people are into traveling. Such targeting could theoretically allow advertisers to reach exactly the people they want, instead of the scatter-shot approach favored today. If you are a wedding planner in Salem, OR, for instance, there are 100 women on Facebook between 20 and 40 who live in Salem and are engaged. That’s pretty deep targeting. MySpace is also moving in this direction, allowing advertising by interest categories and sub-categories.
Update: Apparently, this sort of demographic ad-targeting can be done by Facebook app developers as well. I just got off the phone with RockYou CEO Lance Tokuda and asked him if he could do the same thing on his Facebook ad network. “That is open to us,” he confirmed. “At some point we will be targeting this way when more sophisticated brand advertisers enter the field.” In contrast, most advertisers on Facebook today are just looking for raw numbers.
Checkmate.
This is why Facebook keeps its data out of Google’s prying little hands.
We can expect to see nonprofits and political campaigns using this heavily because of the ability target. What I am not clear about is whether the targeting currently includes the data found within apps? For example, can I target a flyer based on people’s Causes?
Facebook is desperately trying to add a differentiator to enhance its business model…this is yet another step.
http://www.meetingflex.com
Custom Social Networks
This is such common sense. They have so much valid demographic information about their members - you would have thought they would have done this at the very beginning.
Their members are probably most likely to be truthful in their demographics - so advertisers may have more valid prospects
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This is such common sense. They have so much valid demographic information about their members - you would have thought they would have done this at the very beginning?!
Their members are probably most likely to be truthful in their demographics - so advertisers may have more valid prospect
I agree its fascinating being able to target with such specificity, but keep in mind the dismally low click through rates on social networks such as Facebook. One thing this post doesnt mention is that there is a Facebook Flyers Pro version (open to all) that is CPC rather than CPM. We’re going to try out some experiments with Flyers Pro for NewsCred and will review results on our blog.
Shafqat
As an older (over 40) user, I feel more disposed towards ads than younger users are, who are conditioned to receiving free information, free downloads, etc. If the ads are targeted to my interests and not just broad-based spam, then it seems like a decent revenue model for social networking sites like FaceBook.
Salem, OR in the house! Glad to see this tech-mecca represented.
Facebook is moving in the right direction, as Google has taken its steps in the early days.
http://blogkatt.blogspot.com
Welcome to last month, glad you could make it.
I bet the Facebook Flyers will become big. Maybe GG Adsense Big
Will they allow app developers to take advantage of this to target the apps ?
I tipped editor @ tc to this many days ago…
http://www.zaid360.com/2007/10.....per-click/
FB reach and saturation by country using the Flyer Pro data as of last week:
http://blog.robwebb2k.com/2007.....y-country/
Hey, thats awesome!! With deep targeting, ads have much more relevance then for instance google adsense. Adsense targets according to content of site. But here, I can target a user who is in college and is interested in novels with book sites.
HIGHLY targeted ads!! Should be very profitable!!
without wanting to sound too enthusiastic, this type of advertising will prove to be a gold mine for facebook. I sometimes believe that the “who knows whom” function is overrated, that it will be a commodity that will be shared among networks. But user’s interests will be something to monetize big time.
I just added a flyer and the platform appears to be great so far, quicker and easier than google ads.
This kind of deep ad targeting could be so powerful, it’s actually scary.
Anyone know the specific details of the implementation? Do I have to upload my ads specifically to facebook’s servers? In other words, from where are these ads served? How do I manage our campaigns for effectiveness?
This is a great move on Facebook’s part. I expect this to be a major boon for them. Another industry that has this opportunity is the media giants (CBS, ABC, FOX, NBC) with their online streaming television shows.
While I am sure a lot of people may get a little turned off by this, I think its fantastic. Personally I like getting ads that I am interested in. It may sound odd to some people, but one of the reasons I have always loved the webcomic Penny Arcade is because I get ads for games that I didn’t know about there. =)
Here is by far the funniest example of Facebook ad targeting that I have come across:
http://mattishness.blogspot.co.....nalds.html
As if we all didn’t see this coming…
Is the following video by Robert Scoble TC’s rationale behind the daily review of facebook features?
http://www.seesmic.com/Standal.....097kP8igf8
I’m a daily follower of both Techcrunch and Facebook, but I think it’s a little excessive. How about a whole new facebook focused blog?
Why are all my comments “awaiting moderation” now?
I bought a Facebook Flyer as an experiment last week and thought that it was very slick. I used it to target freelance programmers that are current undergrad or graduate students at MIT ages 18-24. This is all for recruiting providers at http://www.odesk.com. If it works out well, I can certainly see expanding our usage of Facebook for advertising.
One note: you don’t have as much targeting functionality for the CPM (cost per thousand impressions) approach as you do for the CPC approach.
I have been using it for a while. It must have some kind of algorithm similar to google’s that lowers placement based on click-thru rate.
1st day ($10/day limit), I had over 350,000 views, with over 100 clicks.
2nd day, 320,000 views, over 100 clicks.
3rd day, 30,000 views, 8 clicks,
4th day, 25,000 views 6 clicks,
…
12th day, 12,000 views 3 clicks.
I thought I hit the jackpot, then it stopped showing it. I wonder if I have to keep changing my content once per day to keep it up.
How do I target people who need cd duplicators, printers etc.
Google adwords looks like a better option.
Fadbook is only for college crowds.
25 - 55 prefer Google search.
They may register into fadbook but will hardly return and will rarely click
I am recently engaged. Since changing my ‘Relationship Status’ to reflect my engagement, 75% of the flyers I see are wedding-related. The wedding map app, wedding planning stuff…you name it, I’ve seen it.
I’ve heard some folks are doing quite well with this already. I posted thoughts today as well.
http://www.optimizeandprophesi.....lyers.html
This has been seen coming for years, but this part is wild
“this sort of demographic ad-targeting can be done by Facebook app developers as well.”
John
All those options, and yet the only ad I see is “Over 30 and single? Meet gorgeous women now!” It’s pretty ridiculous, really, when I’m trying to develop my app and I’ve got the CTO leaning over my shoulder.
It also goes to show how much targeting is really done - my profile states that I’m married.
Duane, that’s probably because you can’t yet ‘exclude’ one particular group. This is really pretty old news though; can’t believe it’s just now popping up on TC although admittedly FB have been really bad at making this function easy to find. Even after creating some flyers I have to remember the url to find my way back
There’s a great post from the 24th of September over on shoemoney where someone explains their findings after abusing the system (#26, he also talks about a similar surge in the beginning): http://www.shoemoney.com/2007/.....affiliate/
I’ve had a few flyers up and the targetting is nice. But seeing as I’m outside the US, it’s not really very relevant because of the language thing. I wish I could base it on other things on the users profile page, but that’s probably a matter of time. Click through rates aren’t great, but I’m using the pro version so only paying per click. Conversions aren’t fantastic ultimately, but I’m still treading the waters with this so that could change as different options are tried. It’s also nice to be able to have some decent alternatives for targetting a specific age demographic especially.
In the future, it won’t be ads displayed, but rather receipts for thingies the system went ahead and purchased for you
Great job by FB, they are really revolutionizing ad targeting in a virtual world. can you imagine how powerful this information will be to media buyers.
Another good move for FB.
It really sucks now because you can’t upload any images for the ad, they censor any curse words and anything they find offensive. Such as flyer I tried to post today for t-shirts that read:
My mama didn’t use birth control and all I got was this shitty life.
They’ve cut me off on several different ads.
p.s. I always check the over 18 years old crowd. Can’t they handle a little cursing? or controversy?
Call me crazy, but I have yet to even visit facebook - I got other things to do in life then tag and bother those who I am close to… skype is the way to go… these social network sites are just a waste of time and resources.
Jon
This comments exchange has missed a key point: Facebook flyers don’t work well for traffic acquisition.
Why?
1. Facebook is a destination and therefore has a very low bounce rate. My sense is that Facebook would have a near zero bounce rate; as opposed to Google which is fundamentally about bouncing. This is a _key_ difference. Target all you want, but if you don’t want to leave the site (facebook), then you’ll struggle to sell your ads to firms which want results from their ad campaign. To compare Google to Facebook misses the fact that they are entirely different platforms - one a launch pad, the other an intensely sticky destination.
2. I tested this by running a short trial: I paid $150 for a Flyer campaign for my sports website, http://www.theroar.com.au. I received less than 40 referrals from Facebook. This equates to about $3.75 a click. I pointed out to facebook how poor the results of the ad campaign were (3 times the price of Google). Their response (below) shows that the staff member who replied understands nothing about the benefits of ad targeting:
======
Hi Zac,
We have confirmed that your flyer campaign has successfully completed its entire campaign on the site. We sent your flyer to 75,000 male (18+ years old) users, who were part of Australian networks. If you feel your flyer did not receive enough exposure we recommend you should consider trying to target different users or relaxing your target constraints. Let me know if you have any further
questions.
Let us know if you have any further questions.
Thanks for contacting Facebook,
Reece
Customer Support Representative
Facebook
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The takeout: be very wary of $10b valuation for a site such as facebook - it’s not actually a good advertising platform for customer acquisition.
Zac, you should have used the pro version then. You pay per click, so you wouldn’t have had this terrible of a result. Yes click throughs are low, but that’s EXACTLY why you should use the CPC they are offering and not just run of the mill flyers (unless you are doing it for the branding).
“Faecbook” - haha! That’s a keeper
Sam - I wasn’t offered this. They said if my campaign was less than $25,000 - then all I had available was the flyers product.
Perhaps something new? Anyway, none of this changes my belief that Facebook will never be a strong marketing channel for customer acquisition.