Yesterday Facebook announced some newsworthy improvements to their advertising reports that will help businesses better understand potential customers and the performance of their ads.
You already know that advertising on Facebook is valuable because great products and services spread virally through the social network, increasing your exposure exponentially. Now you can also see the demographics of users who interact with your ads (think age, gender and geographic location, for starters). This will tell you who is most interested in your products or services. Are you reaching the people you expected to, should you change your target, or is your true audience a different one than you thought? Demographics can be tricky for many businesses, but this new system will offer clarity.
Facebook’s new insights also allow advertisers to view common interests among potential clients, like favorite TV shows, movies, books and music. (NOTE: user privacy is protected, so advertisers cannot tie specific data to a user profile) This valuable information helps advertisers create highly targeted ads that will produce better results while improving the user experience by reducing the number of irrelevant ads.
Another notable change is the ability to view more specific ad performance data.
Advertisers can see how many unique users are clicking through an ad, and measure these results monthly, weekly, or even daily.
Facebook’s social actions are one of the most compelling elements of the network, but until now, advertisers could not measure the viral performance of an ad. Now Facebook’s insights allow businesses to track the social actions associated with their ads, so measuring the true cost per sale becomes easier.
