Facebook Ad Targeting... A follow-up

As the runner up in today's competition to get to an audience of 50,000 for a travel adventure site (hats off to you, Sri-- let us know how that book is!), I thought I would do a little research into strategies for Facebook ad targeting to strengthen my skills in advance of a future competition of this sort. No, I don't expect to take this class again, but hey, you never know what life throws at you. Anyway, I learned some interesting things, and want to share them:

First, here's a visual describing the most popular facebook ad criteria:

Not surprisingly, age and country --both required attributes on a personal profile-- are popular ad criteria. On the other end of the spectrum, you find relationship and zip, which are not required, and often not populated.

Interestingly, "Precise interests," the third most popular ad criterion, are self-reported , while "broad interests," the fourth most popular criterion, are attributes that Facebook assigns each user by studying and grouping a user's Facebook activity. Examples of these broad categories include:

• Small business owners (6.4 million in the US)
• People engaged for 1 year (2.3 million in the US)
• Hispanic (9 million in the US)
• Has a birthday in the next week (2.8 million in the US)
• Soccer fans (8.7 million in the US)

The criterion which is said to result in the highest conversion rates is the attribute "connections," which allows ads to be "targeted according to the relationship a user has with a Facebook page. Businesses can target fans or exclude fans."

"Friends of connections" is a criterion which businesses can target to help establish their brand credibility.  Ads that utilize this option shows facebook users when their connections have "liked" a page.

The advanced targeting options present further opportunities for narrowing the audiences of ads, playing on self-reported --not required-- attributes like relationship status, interests, education, and language. 

So, Sri... care to rematch?

Source: http://socialfresh.com/facebook-ad-options/