Facebook's New Ad Targeting Knows What You Read

It is being reported by the Financial Times that Facebook is planning to announce a major change related to the targeting of advertisements within its platform. Facebook will use the web history of users to serve them more targeted ads. It is being reported that this new targeting will be done through the release of a new sharing button.

This new Facebook button will be available to publishers and bloggers to use on their sites. As Facebook users share articles using this new button, their shared sites will be matched with their Facebook profile to map a user's interests. It is beleived that this targeting can help improve advertising relevancy.

This type of behavioral targeting is already being used on the web today by companies like Google and Amazon. Essentially it gives Facebook a window into your online behavior. If you constantly share stories related to baseball on Facebook, it is likely that in the future you would see more ads on Facebook related to baseball or even sports in general. Facebook is expected to announce this new behavioral targeting system on Wednesday, at Facebook’s annual F8 conference in San Francisco.

The Financial Times also reports that Facebook is expected to announce changes to its “engagement ads”. Engagement ads encourage users to “become a fan”. Changes to these ads could mean that users will agree to receive messages or offers from brands that they "like" on Facebook. This has been a major problem for Facebook fan pages in the past, changes to improve engagement between fans and companies will likely win over marketers.

While marketers should be excited about these changes, it is likely that some users and privacy advocates will have concerns.

Inbound Marketing Takeaways

• Improving context and relevancy for potential customers can create a win-win situation as long as it does not infringe upon privacy.
• Marketers who had poor conversion rates in the past, may want to consider retesting Facebook ads with this new platform.
• Facebook is making strides to create a business-friendly platform; marketers need to understand the paid and organic marketing opportunities within Facebook.
  

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