5 Things You Didn't Know About Facebook Ads

5 Things You Didn't Know About Facebook Ads

Approximately 1.47 billion people make use of the social media platform Facebook, so it seems quite obvious it is perfect to place advertisements on. Here are the five most interesting and important things to know about when creating Facebook Ads.

Audience

This is the most important tool to make use of when creating your advertisement. It isn't very complicated to complete, all that it requires is that you put in some information about whom you want to be viewing the ad.

Specifying an audience can really help narrow down the ad viewers to people who will most likely buy your product or service. By adjusting the information accordingly you could target say moms between the age of 40 and 50 who enjoy camping or hiking. Since this can be so specific it is definitely the most valuable part of any Facebook ads campaign. 

Below are the criteria you can use to target whichever audience you choose:

Age: Anywhere between 13 - 65+

Gender: Non-specified, or just male/female

Languages: Depends on where your ad will be placed

Detailed Targeting: You can include or exclude demographics, interests, behaviors, etc.

Connections: This can be specific to your page or event

Platform

During the creation of an ad, there is a point where you can choose between Facebook, Instagram, Audience Network, or Messenger. The first two and the last (Messenger) are self-explanatory, but the second from the last "Audience Network" is another reason why these ads are great. When choosing this, it displays your advertisement on different apps and websites. This is very handy especially if you are advertising an app yourself. So when doing online marketing through Facebook, you have the option to promote your brand or products on many other platforms.

Placement

For argument's sake after choosing the platform "Facebook" you then get to choose where on Facebook it will go. The options are as follows: Feeds, Instant Articles, In-Stream Videos, Right Column, Suggested Videos, and Marketplace. Each one of these is a viable option but are all for different purposes. If your advertisement is a video, it is most beneficial to choose the In-Stream option. This places your ad underneath videos that your target audience is watching, automatically playing immediately once their video is finished. Most of the time the best option will be to select Feeds since that is what people use the most, especially mobile users. 

Images

One of the most confusing parts about Facebook Ads is when fitting the images to their specifications. The Images must fit certain requirements, Facebook supplies a guide and a program that will say if an image is okay for use. There are two main things to pay attention to, the amount of text in the image and the ratio on desktop, mobile, and tablet. This is imperative since Facebook will actually reject your advertisement if the image has too much text in it. At the moment the optimal text to image ratio is no more than 20%, but could always change in the future.

Tracking

Finally, there is the ability to track every single type of advertisement you make on Facebook. This is extremely useful to see how well it performed and use that to your advantage the next time you create more.

If you want to track the performance of your advertisement, there are three different options, Facebook Pixel, App Events, and Offline Events. The Facebook Pixel is the same as pixel tracking, this gathers data using a 1x1 pixel on the actual advertisement, such as viewers, clicks, etc. App Events is as the name describes, evaluating how effectively your application ad is working, based on different factors. The last one Offline Events is also quite explanatory, this tracks the transactions made in the physical world after people have seen/engaged with the ads on Facebook.