Dive Brief:
- Facebook has expanded the targeting options for its Dynamic Ads format to include interest, per an article in Adexchanger.
- Before the change, the format could be targeted based on products previously viewed by the target audience.
- The interest-based targeting is essentially a look-alike option. “We observe demographics and patterns of activity that indicate a person is really interested in a product category or a specific product and then we extrapolate from that information to find more people like that,” Gabriel Francis, direct-response product marketing lead at Facebook, told Adexchanger.
Dive Insight:
Being able to serve dynamic ads to people who have previously viewed a product is effective retargeting, but adding a look-alike option based on interest allows marketers to reach entirely new people who are more likely to be responsive to an ad’s message. Facebook has been known to provide marketers with a wide variety of targeting options across its different ad formats, and adding more function to Dynamic Ads, a two-year old retargeting format, makes sense given Facebook’s access to user data both on and off its platform.
The look-alike option may be a response to P&G's well-publicized comments last year that it went too narrow with targeting on Facebook, resulting in lost sales from new customers. With look-alike targeting, marketers can boost their acquisition strategies on Facebook by finding potential new customers who have similar interested as their existing ones.
Right now the new targeting option is being tested by a select group of e-commerce and retail advertisers. An online furniture retailer who is one of these testers has reported beating its customer acquisition targets by 20% using the new targeting option.
Facebook has a vested interest in expanding its ad products as reportedly its ad load is maxing out and ad revenue growth rates are predicted to slow by this summer.
