Facebook’s Upcoming Ad Targeting Tool For Pages – An AdWords Killer?

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This debate is showing no sign of drying out. And, with Facebook upcoming ‘Ad Targeting Tool’ its going to heat up further. Social media titan is reportedly working on new tool called ‘Ad Targeting’ for ‘Pages’. The upcoming tool has been designed to make page updates more relevant, targeted and fans centric. Though, the new tool is still under limited roll-out and only few Admins have got access to it, but soon it’s going to be available for all Page admins. While Facebook is gearing up for another major roll-out, the debate over Facebook-Google Ad network has been triggered again. But first thing first;

Facebook ‘Ad Targeting Tool’ Features:

Facebook has already rolled-out basics of the new tool ‘silently’ some time back. However, many of the page admins are either not aware or not utilizing the features effectively. Now, with many new features, Facebook is trying to make the ‘Ad Targeting Tool’ the most important aspect of the Page for brands and business.

Until now Page owners could only post based upon Location and Language. And, now with the latest extension, Page owners can also target Fans’

  • Gender
  •  Age
  • Interested In
  • Education
  • Workplace
  • Relationship Status

And few other interesting parameters !

 

The beans over the new features of Facebook Ad Targeting Tool has been spilled by a group over Facebook “Social Marketers” who claimed that it received the message directly from Facebook:

Page Post Targeting Enhanced

Today, we will start rolling out an enhanced version of Page Post Targeting to a small percentage of Page Admins. Over the next few weeks, this will become available to all pages.  With this new feature, Pages can now target their posts to certain fans in the news feed who meet specific criteria such as age, gender, location, language, etc.

All content will still remain on the Page since this is the only way to allow friends of engaged fans who don’t meet the targeting criteria to see viral stories (i.e. David likes a post.. )

Facebook Ad Targeting: An AdWords Killer ?

This could be debatable! And, many may not agree with thought process but it’s factual and quite sensible for Facebook. Social giant is aggressively looking to strengthen its revenue stream and there could be no better target than Google AdWords market share when it comes to Online advertising Industry. Google controls whooping 9.52% of global advertising industry alone. The advertising revenue of Google is expected to be around $486 Billion in 2012, of which the majority of share is going to come from AdWords.

Interestingly, the drivers behind AdWords and Facebook Page growth are common – Brands and Businesses. Advertisers have spend $8.5 billion in Q1 2012 alone. However, Google offers wide audience with intense and intelligent target mechanism through AdWords only to make the most effective online marketing tool for marketers. With the new features of Ad Targeting Tool, Facebook has narrowed this gap significantly. Page owners can now be more specific and targeted with their messages broadcast which in defiantly result in more response and appreciation by the Fans.

Unfortunately, the major gap of Audience reach is still a concern for Facebook Page owners despite of having close to billion users. While Google offers absolute no restriction with the reach of AdWords, Facebook Page owners can only spread their wings till the limit of their Fans counts. But, this should not be a road block for any brand or business considering they can always enlarge themselves as much as they can in terms of number of fans to increase their reach and the creation of Page and, unlike AdWords, using it as marketing tool is still a free affair for advertisers.

More Authenticity And Reliability

Facebook has always been on target for having pseudo accounts and pages in numbers. In fact, there are many brands who are using multiple pages based upon different target and campaigns. A recent report stats that, on an average, many of Top 100 Fortune companies are managing 10 Facebook Pages to improve their reach and for effective campaigns. With the induction of these new features in Ad Targeting Tool, Facebook has almost killed the necessity of multi-pages – atleast till a significant extent.

This will result in more authentic and responsive Pages and Accounts over Facebook besides more accurate activity report. This will surely boost the confidence among marketers who are still struggling with slightly sluggish aspect of Google AdWords like monthly projection of impressions, clicks they generate before any campaign.

 Facebook Premium Pages:

Soon, we could see the long debated ( and awaited)  premium version of ‘Facebook Page’. Admins of such Pages could leapfrog the limitations of their page updates among Fans. The Premium Page may offer the extensive reach of Page updates beyond the Fans through “Promoted” feature in conjunction with new “Ad Targeting” tool. The current ‘Promote’ feature offers Admin to increase their post/update reach by paying $5 – $10 – but is still limited to Page fans.

Brands and Businesses, who are either novice or struggling to reach significant number of Facebook users, could largely leverage upon ‘Premium Pages’ by paying fixed monthly charges – with certain inherited limitation like number of posts/updates or number of Fans reachability in a month.

Mobile Users – A Challenge For Both Giants

Mobile industry and mobile users are always a challenge for Google and Facebook when it comes to effective targeting. At a side where Google is still struggling to influence the mobile users despite of the acquisition of various mobile Ad networks like AdMob, Facebook is still hunting for the reliable and effective mobile traffic monetizing platform for its 500 million mobile users.

Anyhow, Facebook is silently becoming heavier on Google’s backbone. With 955 million existing users, remarkable growth in many untapped countries like Brazil, Austria, Belgium and Australia and huge potential in Asian market due to low penetration, Facebook posters quite a promising future. And, with the low investment Premium Pages, it could present a tough bought to Google Search in cost centric but conservative online advertising markets like India, which is worth $900 million alone.

UPDATE: We have just learnt that this new advertising tool will be rolled out only to pages that have 5000 or more fans. Facebook feels that pages having less than 5,000 fans don’t need such versatile filter option.

Image Credit: TechCrunch

3 COMMENTS

  1. Can’t play too conservatively when you’re doing PPC. You have to bid to win that traffic. You should be receiving >90% impression share of the keywords you are bidding on and that means bidding a little higher sometimes. What happens is that you have to have an optimized sales process to justify the ability to bid higher. If you make more per sale, you can bid more per click, and squash your competition.  My buddy Simon would be willing to help anybody that wants help with their PPC campaigns, just give him a call. His number is 256-398-3835.

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