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What is Facebook Ads & How Does it Work?
What are Facebook Ads?
Facebook is one of the world’s largest social media platforms. With around 3 billion active users every month, that is an audience that any marketer would like to get in front of! And since Facebook is free for users, they sell ads based on the information they’ve accumulated about their users.
Facebook Ads should be an integral part of any social media marketing strategy as it allows you to target very specific audiences while only paying when certain things occur. This article will review the various aspects of Facebook Ads for you to get a better understanding about it.
How Do Facebook Ads Work?
Facebook Ads works through an ad auction system. Once you set up your ad and identify your target audience, you set your budget and bid for each click or for every 1,000 impressions. When Facebook identifies a user who fits your parameters, it will display the winning ad with the highest value, comprised of the bid, the probability the user will engage, and your ad’s quality. If that ad is yours, Facebook will charge you accordingly.
The benefits of Facebook Ads
The main benefits of Facebook Ads stem from the flexibility and customization available to you:
- Focused targeting: If you’ve heard this once, you’ve heard this 1,000 times – Facebook Ads provide you with a wide range of demographics (discussed below) to help you reach your ideal audience.
- Custom audiences: Facebook allows you to reach out to your established contacts. For example, you could include past customers that haven’t bought anything recently. Or customers who have certain preferences who might like a new product.
- Lookalike audiences: Once you’ve developed a custom audience from current contact, you can use that as a basis for Facebook to identify lookalikes. It would seem logical that users similar to current customers may likely become customers themselves.
- Detailed analytics: Facebook offers various statistics that provide detailed information about your Facebook Ads. You can find out if ads are engaging users, if that engagement turns into sales, and much more so that you can optimize your targeting if needed for greater impact.
- Wider reach: There was once a time when just having a Facebook account and being an active social media participant was enough to expand your reach. It is now extremely competitive to get space on users’ feeds, so paying for ads is the best way to reach people.
The challenges with Facebook Ads
We would be lying if we said that there were no downsides to Facebook Ads:
- Data collection. Specifically, with iOS 14. While it is not the main global operating system, it does make up a significant chunk. And it is changing its policies, forcing apps to only collect and share customer data of users who opt in. This may impact Facebook’s targeting precision.
- Rising fees. Facebook Ads can be more cost effective than other channels, especially traditional advertising, but it is not as cheap as it used to be. But as more and more businesses are turning to Facebook Ads, costs will increase, well, because Facebook can because companies will want to keep advertising to stay competitive.
- Because of the many options from targeting audiences to ad types, it is getting harder to master Facebook Ads. And since costs are rising, you want to make sure you hit the right mark as quickly as possible. Because of this, many businesses are turning to digital media agencies, like IBEX Media Group.
What are your advertising targeting options?
As mentioned, one of the main benefits of Facebook Ads is the precise targeting available. But what does that mean? How targeted can you get? Well, pretty targeted. You can choose to set a range of options to represent the profile of your ideal audience or consumer base. Here are the main options:
- Gender: Do you want to reach men, women, or both?
- Relationship status: There are more than just singled or married people out there.
- Age: You can specify an age range.
- Education: Not only can you target certain education levels, but you can specify fields of study and schools.
- Work: Focus on certain employers, job titles, or industries. Or select groups from each category.
- Interests and hobbies: Expand your reach even further by choosing or combining interests based on likes and other behaviors tracked by Facebook.
There are a wide range of other information, interests, or behaviors you can select or focus on. This includes recent travel (or trip frequencies), device preferences, upcoming life events, and much more.
Types of Facebook Ads
As you define your Facebook Ads strategy, you should be aware of the different types of ads there are so that you can decide the best one(s) to suit your campaign. Here are the main types:
- Image ads are very simple but can be very impactful. If aren’t ready to set up a photoshoot, you can always use an existing post as the basis for your image ad.
- Carousel ads allows you to highlight your products or services with up to ten images. Use these to showcase one offering or ten different ones. Either way, all the images have a Shop Now button for immediate action.
- Poll ads lets your audience interact with you while you get valuable marketing information; however, this is currently only available for mobile devices.
- Video ads allow you to get even more creative with moving pictures. You can create informative explainers to help your users, or you can go for a more entertaining option to increase branding.
- Slideshow ads are like video ads, but use a series of pictures, text, or clips. Because they use much less data than video ads, they load faster, which may be beneficial if you want to reach an audience with potentially slower internet access.
There are many other types of ads, including collection ads, instant experience ads, lead ads, messenger ads, stories ad, and augmented reality ads. If you want to explore the benefits of all these options, you should discuss them with a social media expert at IBEX Media Group.
How much does it cost to advertise on Facebook?
One of the best things about Facebook Ads is that it does not cost an arm and a leg to do. Generally, the minimum spend is about THB 50 per day. Average costs break down to about:
- Cost per click = THB 32
- Cost per 1,000 impressions = THB 243
- Cost per like = THB 36
- Cost per download = THB 185
Please remember that these are just average costs, your expenses may be more or less depending on your planning and execution.
How to get started with Facebook Advertising
Basically, you should approach Facebook Ads like any other marketing campaign – set goals, define your target audience, choose messaging and formats. However, to make the most of Facebook Ads, you need to understand how to leverage the tools to target and track your campaign. For the best results, you should consult with a trusted Facebook Agency like IBEX Digital Agency.
IBEX is a full-service digital marketing agency in Bangkok, Thailand – We’ll help your brand & business grow with our Social Media Agency, SEO Agency, Facebook Ads & Video Production.