Facebook advertising overview

Reasons why Facebook Advertising is hugely exciting for marketers:

• Audience size: Facebook now boasts over 1.13 billion daily active users on 1.03 billion of which access the social network via mobile devices.
• Attention: People spend a lot of time on social networks. The average user spends about 50 minutes just on Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger every day.
• Organic reach decline: Organic reach on Facebook has been in decline for a few years now and has almost hit zero. If you want to break through now, Facebook is all but a pay-to-play network.
• Targeting: The targeting options within Facebook Ads is incredible. Business can target users with by location, demographics, age, gender, interests, behavior, and much more.

Social media targeting

Social media targeting is a form of online advertising that focuses on social media. Retailers can use this type of advertising and take advantage of the users’ demographics, location, interests, and so forth and target their ads accordingly.

Some of the available targeting options include:

• Location
• Education
• Work
• Financial status
• Generation
• Parental status
• Ethnicity
• Languages
• Connections to specific Facebook pages
• Behaviours

Types of Facebook ads

Image ads

These simple ads are a great way to get started with Facebook paid advertising. You can create one with just a few clicks by boosting an existing post with an image from your Facebook Page.

Image ads may be simple, but that doesn’t mean they have to be boring.

Video ads

Video ads can run in the News Feed and Stories, or they can appear as in-stream ads in longer Facebook videos. Video ads can show your team or your product in action, like this quick demo video ad from IKEA.

Poll ads

This mobile-only Facebook ad format incorporates an interactive component by adding a two-option poll to an image or video ad. You can add a separate link for each poll choice.

Both you and those who answer will see the tally of responses to each poll option.

Carousel ads

A carousel ad uses up to 10 images or videos to showcase your product or service.

You can use this format to highlight different benefits of one product, several different products or even use all the photos together to create one large panorama image.

Slideshow ads

Slideshow ads offer an easy way to create short video ads from a collection of still photos, text, or existing video clips.

Slideshow ads have eye-catching motion, just like videos, but use five times less data. So, they load well even for people on slow internet connections. They’re an easy, low-impact way to draw attention.

Collection ads

These Facebook paid ads, which are offered only for mobile devices, allow you to showcase five images or videos that customers can click to buy a product or service.

Collection ads pair with Instant Experiences (more on those below) and allow people to buy your products without ever leaving Facebook. This makes online shopping easy when people are on-the-go.

Instant Experience ads

Instant Experience ads used to be called Canvas. They’re a full-screen ad format that loads 15 times faster than a mobile website outside of Facebook.

Lead ads

Lead ads are only available for mobile devices. That’s because they’re specifically designed to make it easy for people to give you their contact information without a lot of typing.

They’re great for collecting newsletter subscriptions, signing someone up for a trial of your product or allowing people to ask for more information from you. Several automakers have successfully used them to encourage test drives.

Dynamic ads

Dynamic ads allow you to promote targeted products to the customers most likely to be interested in them.

For instance, say someone has visited a product page or placed a product in their shopping cart on your website, but then abandoned the purchase. With dynamic ads, you can advertise that specific product in their Facebook feed.

This reminds the potential customer to complete the purchase, and can be a very effective Facebook marketing strategy.

Messenger ads

Facebook Messenger ads give you access to the 1.3 billion people who use Messenger every month. When creating your ad, simply choose Messenger as the desired placement. You also need to select Facebook feed.

Stories ads

Mobile phones are meant to be held vertically. Stories ads are a mobile-only full-screen vertical video format that allows you to maximize screen real estate without expecting viewers to turn their screen.

Augmented reality ads

Augmented reality ads use features like filters and animation to allow people to interact with your brand.

For example, the filter could help users see what a shade of lipstick would look like on their lips, or how a pair of glasses might fit their face.

Pros

• Campaigns are easy to track
• Immediate influx of traffic
• Complete control over your daily budget and maximum Cost-per-click
• Instant return on investment (You can easily define a cost per conversion and understand what your profit is)
• More targeting options, including, towns, regions, age, likes/interests, income bracket, and other demographics
• Easier to set up than Google AdWords
• The ability to reach people early on in the buying process, before they are aware of their need, while capturing those who are aware of the need in a subtle way
• You can use images and videos to capture the interest of your target market, helping you to sell your products and services
• CPC is relatively cheap, depending on your industry (On average, no more than $0.61 per click)

Cons

• There is no option to target your ads at certain times within the day or on certain days of the week unless you choose a lifetime budget
• If set up and managed incorrectly, it can be costly, but less so than Google AdWords
• Depending on your target market, the majority of the large potential audience can be irrelevant (For instance, we would not recommend Facebook Advertising if someone only served or supplied their products and services to one town)
• Most suitable for those operating in B2C markets
• Reaching people too early in the buying cycle could potentially reduce your goal conversion rate