Facebook starts rollout of Custom Audiences to all advertisers

Facebook announced Wednesday that Custom Audiences, the ad product that allows marketers to import their own contact lists for targeting, will be available to all advertisers worldwide by the end of November.

Facebook alerted advertisers in a Facebook for Business blog post:

Previously available only through Facebook’s Power Editor tool, today’s announcement means marketers will be able to use Custom Audiences in any Facebook ad interface. Small businesses in particular will now be able to use their current customer lists to reach people on Facebook. And, for the first time, businesses can use MailChimp lists with Custom Audiences.

Getting started with Custom Audiences is simple — just upload customer info like email addresses or phone numbers. Once contacts have been uploaded, you can target matched users with ads for your site, Facebook Page or mobile app.

Starting today, Custom Audiences will start rolling out in all ad interfaces for a limited number of U.S. advertisers. Facebook will start rolling Custom Audiences out globally next week, with all advertisers having the capability by the end of November.

Readers: If you’ve been able to try Custom Audiences, how helpful has it been?

Image courtesy of Facebook.

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Guest Post: Advertisers Likely to Flock to Facebook’s New Self-Serve Targeting Feature

This is a guest post by Resolution Media Director of Client Strategy and Development George Manas.

Marketers seeking better ways to reduce waste, influence buying behavior and strengthen brand equity are likely to embrace Facebook Partner Categories. Launched on April 10, this new self-service capability puts a rich array of data-driven targeting segments at advertisers’ fingertips, helping increase the precision, relevance and effectiveness of their Facebook campaigns.

Partner Categories uniquely combines data describing both the online and offline purchasing behavior of consumers in more than 500 segments and relies on data from third-party firms Datalogix, Acxiom and Epsilon. Marketers of all sizes can benefit from Partner Categories’ easy access and no-minimum-spend requirement.

The new service is the latest in a series of targeting enhancements introduced by Facebook to improve advertisers’ results. Partner Categories likely will attract as many or more advertisers as has Facebook’s recently launched Custom Audiences program, which provides the ability to import customer data to improve targeting.

Partner Categories integrates with other targeting options within Power Editor (Facebook’s advanced self-serve platform) and is available through select paid media APIs. U.S.-based advertisers can begin using Partner Categories immediately, while advertisers based in other countries must be white-listed to use the service and may only target U.S. consumers at this time.

Although we see almost daily examples of new technology empowering the consumer’s evolution, it’s important to also acknowledge the vital impact of new advertiser services like Partner Categories, which keep marketers ahead of the curve.

Making It Work

Advertisers can leverage Partner Categories in designing Facebook buys through the Power Editor interface, selecting specific consumer segments much as they would select Facebook’s native targeting segments like Age, Gender, Broad and Precise Interests, and so forth. As with other Facebook targeting services, the advertiser only sees the size of the audience and receives no information about individuals included in a category.

To further refine targeted buying, advertisers may combine Partner Categories with native Facebook targeting filters, Custom Audiences and Lookalike Audience options. For example, an advertiser might target female yogurt buyers under age 35 by layering gender and age parameters to the “Yogurt Buyer” Partner Category segment. The ability to combine both native and third-party data gives greater depth and precision to the Facebook buy.

Partner Categories delivers three key benefits to marketers. First, it minimizes wasted spending by more precisely reaching and engaging the consumers that matter most to them, boosting cost efficiency and effectiveness.

Second, the service enables advertisers to influence buying behavior by delivering brand messages and incentives to consumers who are category buyers or in market for specific products. As such, Partner Categories can help drive purchases or influence purchase decisions.

Third, Partner Categories can build brand equity by providing advertisers with additional opportunities to drive visibility of their brands and branded content to core consumer segments at scale. Combined with Facebook’s self-serve targeting flexibility, Partner Categories enables advertisers to boost brand relevancy by delivering messages tailored to the precise purchasing behaviors of specific consumer segments.

Facebook’s Partner Categories demonstrates Facebook’s commitment to helping marketers better reach and engage the consumers who are most important to them. Advertisers can expect Partner Categories to help drive sales, build brand health, and ultimately achieve better ROI and more effective media buying.

George Manas is Director of Client Strategy and Development at Omnicom Media Group’s Resolution Media. Specializing in Search and Social Media, George helps some of the world’s most recognized brands navigate the transforming digital landscape that has become so central to today’s consumer. PepsiCo, Warner Bros, Discovery Networks, and Showtime stand among some of the brands with whom George has worked.

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Advertisers can now target Facebook ads by recency of activity

Facebook has created a new way for businesses and developers to target ads to users who have taken an action on Facebook or in an app within a more specific time range.

Using the “action spec” targeting capability, which allows advertisers to reach users by the actions they take in Open Graph apps and on Facebook directly, an advertiser could designate a time range shorter than 14 days. The default is still 14 days, but previously there was no option to set a shorter window.

This change gives advertisers more accuracy in reaching the most relevant users for a particular message. For instance, a local business might want to reach users who checked into their store within the past week. A developer might want to target users who installed their app in the past three days. A page owner might want to retarget users who viewed one of their page tabs the day before.

Action spec targeting is still a beta feature limited to advertisers working with Preferred Marketing Developers with the Ads API, so it isn’t widely known or understood. However, the feature offers developers unique opportunities to reach users who have taken specific in-app actions, including in their competitor’s apps. It also gives brands ways to segment and target their fans by the actions they take on their page or a competitor’s page.

Action spec targeting is also interesting in that advertisers can define a “negative action spec,” meaning users who have not taken a particular action. For example, a developer could reach users who have played a game, but not made an in-app purchase in the last 10 days. Advertisers can also reach friends of users who have taken a particular action.

More technical information about action spec targeting, including targeting by app activity in a time range is available here. A list of Facebook actions that advertisers can target against using action specs is available here. Businesses that are interested in this type of targeting should seek out an ads-qualified PMD.

To learn more about this topic, join us at Inside Social Apps in San Francisco June 6-7. One of our Vendor Workshops is “Scaling Up Your User Base Without Sacrificing Quality” where Adotomi Chairman & Co-Founder Joe McCormack will explain how to leverage the complexity of Facebook advertising into large audiences of deeply engaged users and players.

Mediabistro Event

Get personalized advice from industry insiders at Facebook, Deloitte, Chartboost, Tango, and more at next week’s Inside Social Apps, June 6-7 in San Francisco. Newly added speakers include Val Bauduin of Deloitte & Touche, LLP and Doug Purdy, Director of Developer Products at Facebook, so don’t miss the chance to add these valuable contacts to your network. Avoid on-site prices and register now.

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Facebook ‘Lookalike Audiences’ help advertisers reach users similar to current customers, others in their database

Facebook is testing a new feature called “Lookalike Audiences” that helps advertisers target users similar to those in their Custom Audience databases, a spokesperson from the company tells us. Advertisers in the beta have seen lower costs per action than with traditional targeting options.

Lookalike Audiences can be created after an advertiser has uploaded a list of first-party data, such as customer email addresses, phone numbers or user IDs to make a Custom Audience. Facebook’s algorithms analyze the Custom Audience and produce another audience segment that is likely to have a similar customer profile. The advertiser can then create any Facebook ad type and target it to the Lookalike Audience. No personally identifiable information is shared back with advertisers and Lookalike Audiences can only be used within Facebook, not exported for email marketing or other ad targeting.

The feature is in limited beta from the Power Editor tool in the U.S. Lookalike Audiences cannot yet be created through the main self-serve ad dashboard or the Ads API. Advertisers can optimize for reach, which will return Lookalike Audiences that are larger but a bit less precise, or optimize for similarity, which will return audiences that are smaller but more similar to the advertiser’s existing Custom Audience. Lookalike Audiences can be combined with other interest or demographic targeting options, so an advertiser could limit its ads to a similar audience that lives in Ohio, or a similar audience who is not already a fan of the advertiser’s page, for example.

Lookalike Audiences could be a powerful new targeting opportunity that helps advertisers achieve their goals and makes ads more relevant for users. CEO Mark Zuckerberg alluded to this type of innovation on the company’s fourth quarter earnings call last week.

“There’s a big opportunity in front of us to make every ad that we’re showing a lot better,” he said. “The biggest ways we’re going to do this are by improving targeting and relevance so we can show everyone content that they care more about and by designing better ad products that aren’t just about links and text and images. For targeting, I’m most excited about the work that we’re doing on Custom Audiences.”

Custom Audiences, which enables advertisers to apply their CRM data to social advertising, has already shown promise for advertisers and for Facebook. On the same call last week, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg called Custom Audiences “some of the best targeting available on or off line today.”

She pointed to how men’s fashion site JackThreads achieved a 30 percent lower cost per acquisition than other platforms by using Custom Audiences and saw a 6x return on ad spend. A few months ago, AdParlor told us that one of its clients, a travel company, saw 25x return on investment using Custom Audiences.

Lookalike Audiences would allow businesses to reach users who aren’t in their database but who are similar to those that are, based on the type of Facebook data that advertisers can currently target against. This algorithmic approach could be more effective than having advertisers select their own demographic and interest-based targeting. Facebook tells us that an online travel site saw 70 percent lower costs per action using Lookalike Audiences, and an online shopping site experienced 56 percent lower CPA and 94 percent lower costs per checkout.

Ads and analytics company Optimal offers its own version of lookalike audience targeting using its Audience Matrix and Expander tools. CEO Rob Leathern said he couldn’t comment on Facebook’s features but pointed to a case study where one of Optimal’s clients achieved 60 percent lower costs per fan by identifying the interests of a brand’s most loyal customer base and then targeting friends of fans who matched that profile.

“When a brand has a lot of fans, then their friends become very diffused,” Leathern said. “So we focused on the friends of the fans that looked most like actual customers of the company to build that segment out. It has (and continues) to work well for our large Fortune 1000 customers, and we expect a lot of brands to use interest-based targeting to hone in on specific customer subsegments that can be uniquely productive for them.”

Ads API company Ampush says it is looking to test Facebook’s Lookalike Audiences for a daily deals company and other clients, but it is too soon to discuss performance.

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Facebook allows advertisers to choose Sponsored Stories placement in News Feed or mobile

Facebook advertisers are now able to buy Sponsored Stories in News Feed and on mobile separately from other ad placements by using the Ads API or Power Editor tool, the company tells us.

Previously, advertisers could not choose where their Sponsored Stories were shown, and they did not get a breakdown of performance by placement. This change will give advertisers more control over their ads and more data to be able to optimize their campaigns. For the first time, advertisers will be able to specifically indicate that they want their ads to be shown in the mobile News Feed, which presents new opportunities for app and game developers to reach Facebook users while they’re on their phones.

As seen in this image from Power Editor, advertisers can choose to show their ads in on the desktop right-hand side, desktop News Feed, mobile News Feed or all locations. This is useful for advertisers whose page or application is desktop- or mobile-only. For instance, a page seeking to drive users to a landing tab would want to promote within the desktop News Feed, but not on mobile where tabs aren’t accessible. An iOS or Android developer, however, would want to choose mobile only.

With Sponsored Stories, advertisers can only reach users who have already Liked their page or added their app, or who have friends that have connected with a page or app. Advertisers can’t specifically choose their own copy, but they can choose to promote different actions, for example, Liking a page, earning a high score or reading an article. Third-party mobile apps can then drive users to a specific section within their app or an app download page. The following story from Turntable.fm was not promoted with Sponsored Stories, but it shows the type of activity that can be sponsored and how it could drive app downloads.

Advertisers looking to promote a page or particular post might want to run different ad variations to find the best performing placement. Sponsored Stories in the feed are likely to have higher clickthrough rates than those on the right-hand side, but is too early to tell what sort of price variation there is between these different locations.

Advertisers can buy mobile or desktop News Feed placement through a third-party provider with access to the Ads API or through the Power Editor tool, but not the main self-serve ad dashboard.

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‘Offers’ on Facebook exclusive to premium advertisers for now, will be free for all pages later this year

After months of beta testing and an official announcement last month, Facebook still hasn’t made its offers product available to pages unless they are major advertisers.

Offers are a new free story type that allows page owners to post coupons that users can collect from News Feed or ad units. Currently, pages do not have access to the feature unless they are working with the social network as a premium advertiser. The company likely wants to discover and resolve any issues with the creation and redemption of offers before pushing the feature live to all pages, but some page owners interpret the delay as another example of Facebook favoring large brands over small businesses.

Facebook tells us offers will, in fact, be available to pages of all sizes soon.

“We are slowly rolling offers out over the course of the coming weeks, but eventually, any business with a page will be able to run an offer,” a company spokesperson says.

Judging from past Facebook statements, “coming weeks” could mean several months from now, so businesses should not count on running offer campaigns in the next quarter unless they work directly with a Facebook account manager.

Perhaps the social network is taking its time to release offers to avoid the fate of its other deals services. The company launched check-in deals in November 2010, but these never quite took off among merchants. Finding the dashboard to create them was difficult, Facebook had to approve each deal and there were few ways for users to discover deals. A spokesperson told us in February that Facebook would discontinue check-in deals in favor of the new offers functionality. The social network also tried offering prepaid deals à la Groupon, but it scrapped the idea after a few months.

The new offers have a lot of potential since they begin as page posts. Page owners will be able to create them with little trouble and they’ll get distribution among a page’s existing fan base. Claiming offers is simple — one click sends a coupon to a user’s email account — and results in prominent News Feed stories that increase awareness of the promotion. Businesses can also buy Sponsored Stories to support the offer.

Facebook could tweak the design and functionality of offers when it releases the feature widely, but here is the anticipated flow for creating an offer based on the site’s help center.

The page publisher (seen below) will get a new “Offer” icon: 

Clicking the icon will bring up a dialog to describe the offer in 100 characters and set an expiry date.

Then, page owners can upload a small photo for the offer and describe the terms and conditions. After that, the offer can be published to the page.

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Study: Facebook favors advertisers that stay on-site

Advertisers running campaigns that keep traffic within Facebook are likely to pay less than those driving to an external site, according to a study by TBG Digital.

The agency, which specializes in Facebook advertising, found 45 percent lower costs per click for campaigns promoting fan pages and apps than those for third-party sites, even when clickthrough rates were the same. This could lead some advertisers to consider developing tab applications that replicate aspects of their website to move users down the conversion funnel while keeping them on Facebook. TBG Digital analyzed data from 266 clients advertising in 205 countries in Q4. The agency runs campaigns on behalf of a number of Fortune 500 companies from the entertainment, retail, consumer goods, games and finance sectors, among others.

According to CEO Simon Mansell, the company normalized the data to account for differences in clickthrough rate. Ads that stay within Facebook have stronger calls to action — the Like button, RSVP button, Play button — and social context that make users more likely to click them versus ads that lead off-site. When ads have a higher clickthrough rate, costs per click go down. TBG Digital found that even when CTR was the same, Facebook charged an average 45 percent less per click for ads that kept users within its ecosystem than those that didn’t. This supports a previous report from TBG in Q2 2011, which found 29 percent lower CPCs for fan page and app ads.

Advertisers might consider how they could use Facebook pages instead of external landing pages. Gaining Likes might not be an advertiser’s goal, but a tab app could prompt users to watch a video, browse a catalog, enter their information or take some other action toward conversion. If CPC savings are more than the cost of development, this could greatly benefit advertisers who formerly used Facebook ads to lead people to an external site. For TBG, these were mainly clients in the financial sector.

Facebook naturally wants to keep users on its own platform so that it can continue to serve ads to them, but it is not going to turn down paying customers who want to advertise third-party sites. Lowering CPCs, though, is a way to incentivize advertisers to change their approach to something more favorable to Facebook.

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“Facebook for Business” Resource Center Eases Onboarding for Marketers and Advertisers

Yesterday, Facebook launched its “Facebook for Business” resource center, which collects instructions and guides for using Pages, ads, Sponsored Stories, and Platform applications. It walks business owners, marketers, and advertisers through the purpose and functionality of Facebook’s core products in simple, straightforward language, and links to .PDFs where they can learn more.

With Google preparing to allow businesses onto Google+, this seems like an opportune time for Facebook to showcase the depth of its existing business offering and make it easier to start marketing to its 750 million users.

Previously, the resources found on Facebook for Business were scattered across several other official Pages and introduction sites, including Facebook Marketing Solutions, Guide to Facebook Ads, and Facebook Platform. Now businesses can find all this information in one place, and with a more intuitive flow for those unfamiliar with Facebook.

The section on Pages gives step-by-step instructions for creating a Page, executing a strategy, gaining fans, and using Page Insights. One new recommendation it includes is that Page admins should create a “conversation calendar” to organize what kind of posts their Page will publish each day of the week.

For ads, Facebook outlines how to create and target ads, manage a budget, and optimize performance by analyzing metrics. It links to a Facebook Ads Optimization Guide (.PDF), which recommends a strategy of testing ad variants for two to three days.

The Sponsored Stories section is the first dedicated site for learning about the social ad unit. It does a good job of clearly explaining a complex subject. Lack of understanding of how Sponsored Stories work has likely been a deterrent to adoption. These instructions, combined with recent reports of the high efficiency of the ad unit, should lead more advertisers to integrate Sponsored Stories into their mix.

Canvas Apps, Page tab apps social plugins, mobile single-sign on, and Facebook Credits are all addressed on in the Platform section. This part of Facebook for Business is the least fleshed out, often just directing users to the developer documentation, which may be too advanced for those new to the Platform.

Google+ has run into a few snags in its program for businesses. Many brands created personal profiles only to have them deleted. While it first said that official brand pages would be available within weeks of the launch of the new social network, Google has revised that time table to say businesses may have to wait months before they can set up a presence on Google+.

Facebook may be purposefully taking advantage of the the current discontent with its new competitor by launching Facebook for Business this week. It may be able to gain extra ground on Google if it can remind both existing Facebook-integrated businesses and those new to the site of all the marketing channels it already offers.

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