Since Facebook gets tons of data from their users, who share it voluntarily on their profile and through their actions (things like age, location, interests, and behaviors), they really know who their users are and what they like. Facebook then takes this knowledge and gives businesses the opportunity to set up a Facebook ad. Facebook ads allow businesses to market to new people that are known to be interested and buy their types of products, promote their sites to people who visit ones that are similar or promote their events to people Facebook thinks would likely attend. With Facebook ads, businesses can also retarget the people that have been on their website recently.
Facebook Ad Example
What do you know? When I was scrolling through my Facebook newsfeed today I saw this ad from Clickfunnels, the drag and drop sales funnel building software:
You might say: “Wait, Val, are you sure this isn’t just a news feed post from Clickfunnels? How do you know this is an ad?”
Hmm… Great question!
There are a few features that every Facebook Ad has and these make them unmistakable to the trained eye. Knowing these, you can know for sure that it’s an ad.
Here they are:
- You can see a “Sponsored” tag right underneath the name of the page that is advertising to you.
- Unlike regular news feed items, all Facebook ads have a call-to-action (also called a CTA), in the bottom right corner. Facebook has a predefined set of CTA buttons that you can choose from when setting up a Facebook ad. These will say one of the following:
- Learn More
- Sign Up
- Download
- Contact Us
- Shop Now
- Book Now
- Watch More
- Apply Now
- Not shown in this picture, if you haven’t liked the page, there’s also a unique “Like Page” button, in the top right corner, that’s never visible on regular posts.
So, remember, you know it’s a Facebook Ad by seeing these 3 things:
- A “sponsored” tag, below the name of the site
- A call-to-action button in the bottom right corner
- The prompt to like the page in the top right corner (if you haven’t liked it).
What Made Facebook Pick You To Show The Ad To?
There are several ways I might have been chosen to view the ad from Clickfunnels. In no particular order here are how I might’ve been chosen:
1) One way might’ve been that I recently have been to Clickfunnels.com or one of their landing pages. Since Clickfunnels has set up their Facebook tracking pixel on their websites they can specifically show me their Facebook ads if they choose. I know this because when I use the free Chrome extension tool ‘pixel helper’ it shows they have 2 pixels on their website.
When the pixel fires (someone goes on their website), the Facebook pixel pretty much tells Facebook, “Hey, this person has done this action on this site recently!”
Clickfunnels then can create a Custom Audience of people who have visited their website to target with Facebook ads, using the website traffic data to even show people ads for specific things they’ve shown interest in on their website. With this custom audience, they can set up an ad set that includes targeting visitors to their website aka “Facebook if someone has visited Clickfunnels.com in the last ‘X amount’ of days, show them this ad.”
2) I might’ve been chosen based on Clickfunnels meeting a custom audience criteria. This custom audience can be can include and exclude people based on:
- Location (Country, State, Mile Radius)
- Age
- Gender
- Languages
- Interests
- Employers
- Education Level
- Relationship Status
- Behaviors
- Demographics
- Connections (Like Their Facebook Page)
Example: Clickfunnels decided to target people that live in the United States, Male or Female, speak English, are interested in Tony Robbins and Online Advertising, are self-employed, and have the behavior of buying digital products, and have a relationship status of single + have the connection of liking their Facebook Page. Facebook would find me eligible to be shown the ad from Clickfunnels.
The Advertising Experience
You might wonder why Facebook doesn’t make its advertising more aggressive and obvious, like News sites or Youtube.
I don’t think anyone jumps for joy when they click a Youtube video and something like this pops up:
YouTube makes you sit through an ad for every couple videos that you watch. You can skip the ads for a while, but eventually, you’ll have to sit through an ad with no skip option. For long videos, they even show you multiple ads during the video (just like TV commercials).
The result: People HATE YouTube ads. I’m pretty sure 99% of people leave their computer or hop on social media and return to the video once it’s over. You’ve probably even expressed this ‘dislike’ with a friend.
YouTube ads disrupt the flow of a good user experience. We want our experience to be us watching the videos we want to watch, for as long as we like. YouTube changes the experience for us, by interrupting it with paid ads.
Facebook, however, has their thinking cap on and integrate their ads into the natural flow of the experience, as seamlessly as possible into the newsfeed of people around the world.
You always scroll down through your news feed, either with your mouse or your finger. Ads are inserted into your feed, you are not interrupted. You can decide to look at it and take action or just keep on scrolling. You’d be surprised how many people don’t even realize there are ads on Facebook and just click on them. It doesn’t change the user experience at all.
From the man, Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook CEO himself:
“It’s important to remember that Facebook is about bringing people closer together and enabling meaningful social interactions; it’s not primarily about consuming content passively.”
There are also sidebar ads (desktop only), which are similar to banner ads, but they just cover what would otherwise be white space, so there’s also no interruption there.
Making the ads blend in and not be recognized as such, to the untrained eye, is one of the secrets behind Facebook’s huge revenue growth (10 Billion in Q3 of 2017).
So, a Facebook ad, in short, is a paid piece of digital real estate to show your offer or promotion inside the news feed of a specific, targeted audience on Facebook.
P.S. Facebook Ads are drastically underpriced and underutilized for the value they provide!