With more organizations looking to online options to connect with consumers, a lot of people are trying to get a better understanding of the details of Facebook’s ad systems. To help with this, this week, Facebook published a new overview of how its ad system works as part of its “Good Questions, Real Answers” series.
Here’s an overview of the key points.
First off, Facebook notes that it uses two key factors to determine which ads to show users:Audience targeting, which is selected by advertisers, and determines which people are eligible to see each adIt’s ad auction process, which is based on a range of factors relating to bid price, individual user engagement and ad qualityThe first point is relatively straight-forward – as explained by Facebook:”First, advertisers choose their target audience through our self-service tools. Audiences are created based on categories like age and gender, as well as actions people take on our apps such as liking a Facebook Page or clicking on an ad. Advertisers can also use information they have about their audience, like a list of emails or people who’ve visited their website, to build a custom audience or a lookalike audience.”
So you can use Facebook’s in-depth audience targeting tools, based on their profile and behavioral information related to Facebook usage and data, or you can upload your own audience information and look to either target them, or people with similar traits, via Facebook’s systems.
Lookalike Audiences can be a particularly powerful option in this respect. With Lookalikes, Facebook’s systems are able to match the profile data of your existing email or customer list […]
