Just when we thought all the changes to the Facebook advertising platform had
been done for with this year, Facebook have introduced some new changes to the
targeting options that they're going to be rolling out early next year.
What is that all about and how's that going to affect you as an advertiser?
That's what today's video is going to be all about, so stick around.
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Now let's have a chat about what is going on with Facebook's targeting options.
So let's jump on the computer.
So here's the news release that's been put out by Graham Mudd, who's the VP of
product marketing and ads at Facebook.
He goes into quite a lot of detail about what the changes are that
are being made, why they're making them, how it's going to affect you.
So I'm just going to go through this article and just explain what's
happening here and give you my take on what and how it's going to
affect us as advertisers as well.
So the first thing to note is that Facebook is under considerable
pressure from groups about some of the ways that they behaved in the
past and the way that information has been used by advertisers and used by
Facebook as well and that's why some of these changes are coming through.
So basically what's happening is that Facebook is removing detailed targeting
options that relate to topics that people might perceive as sensitive such
as some causes there's organizations, there's public figures, health or race
or ethnicity or political affiliation or religion, sexual orientation, et cetera.
The reason that they're doing that is because using those detailed targeting
options can result according to experts in negative experiences for some people
and obviously Facebook doesn't want to be seen as enabling that kind of experience.
They want people to use the platform and have a good time using it and they
want to reduce the potential for abuse.
They say that there was lots of arguments on either side of the
fence about this, and they've had to deliberate long and hard.
And the result is that they are removing some detailed targeting options.
If you don't know what detail targeting options are, then I will have another
video for that, and I'll put a link to that in the description below.
But essentially detailed targeting allows you to be more selective about the
people that you want to show your ads to.
So we know that we can target according to age or location, but we can also
target according to certain interests facebook has built into their system.
They use people's behavior and the things that they put in their profile
to work out oh these people are interested in sports or they might
be interested in swimming, or they might be interested in dogs or cats.
Essentially what they're doing is removing the ability to do
detailed targeting using some of the options that I talked about before.
So it's health causes like lung cancer awareness or world diabetes day, or
chemotherapy, sexual orientation, LGBT culture, religious practices, Catholic
church, Mormons, political beliefs, social issues, the list goes on.
So they're going to be taking those options out of the detailed targeting
options as of next year, and that will be happening on 19th of January 2022.
So not very far away.
Now that we know that some of these options are going to be removed, that
means that for some advertisers who relied on these options to make a difference
further their cause, get results for their clients, it means they're not
gonna be able to use those anymore.
So what can you do to mitigate the effect that it's going to have
on you as an advertiser, by the removal of these targeting options?
So let's talk about that.
Facebook do recommend a number of options here, which are all pretty valid.
One is just to remember that you've got broad targeting, so
you can still target by gender.
You can still target by age.
You can still target by location.
So they're not taking those away from you.
And some of their other top tips include using engagement custom audiences.
So they might be people that have liked your Facebook page or have
interacted with one of your ads or your page or your Instagram account.
They might also be people who have interacted with one of
your videos from your ads.
Basically they're people who have shown some direct interest in your brand.
If you are wanting to get in touch with people who have at least had some
interaction with your brand, then you want to use those kind of audiences
with your advertising, and that's what we call a retargeting audience.
Some people might refer to them as warm audiences as well.
In addition to that, you've got lookalike audiences, which is one
of the most powerful, and it's the one that we most often use.
So if you have a list of customers who have purchased from you before
and there's more than 500 people in that list, then you definitely want to
upload that list to Facebook and create a lookalike audience from it and make
that at least 250,000 people in size and chances are that is going to produce
excellent results for your advertising.
Even though they're people who don't know about your brand, Facebook is very
good at finding people who are like people who you already have a list of.
So the bigger that list, the better that's going to work.
Now, you can also use the information that's available
within your Facebook pixel.
So your Facebook pixel will store information regarding people who
have purchased from you before, but it only goes back six months.
So what I find works better is you either extract the list from your
e-commerce system or your email system, upload that to Facebook.
Or you can directly integrate your email system like Klaviyo, for example,
and you could just create a segment of people who have made a purchase
from you before, and then integrate that back to a custom audience on
Facebook so that it stays up to date.
And that's a really great source audience that you can use to
create a lookalike audience with.
Of course you've got website custom audiences.
So they might be people who have visited your website before, they might be people
who have added something to their cart.
They might be people who've reached the checkout page, who
have looked at certain categories or certain pages on your website.
You can use all of those as a custom audience that you can show ads to, or you
can also use it as a source audience that you can create a lookalike audience from.
They do mention a couple of other changes here, which are noteworthy.
One is that they're going to be updating the targeting options.
People might still add content that they're not interested in and
they're going to be enhancing the system so that people can opt out
of seeing those kinds of ads at all.
So currently they do make that option available, so you can choose
not to see ads about alcohol, pets, parenting, politics, but early next
year, they're going to be introducing additional options so that people
can opt out of seeing ads about weight loss or gambling among others.
So if you are an advertiser in one of those areas then that's something
that you really want to start thinking about how you can do without those
targeting options being available to you.
In closing Facebook say just like they have done for several years, they're
going to be continuing to evolve and evaluate what's going on their platform
and how they can make it better for their partners, how they can make
it better for the users of their platform, and that's pretty much it.
So that's all for today's video.
I hope you found this content useful.
Before you go, I just want to let you know that I have a great resource
available, which is my Facebook group.
We're now at 3,100 members and growing fast.
It's a community of facebook advertisers and people wanting to
learn about Facebook advertising.
I personally am in the community every day, answering people's questions.
There are other people who are experts in their particular field
that help people answer questions.
There's a lot of resources and a lot of time being put into this community.
So there'll be a link to the Facebook group in the description
on this video below so maybe I'll see you in there some time.
Once again, thank you for watching.
Hope you found this useful.
If you've got any questions or comments, please drop them in the comments below
and I'll see you in the next video.