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Unless you spend most of your time under a rock, you will have heard of Facebook’s troubles regarding its cavalier use of its user’s personal data. Zuckerberg was grilled in Congress and they were recently fined £500,000 for their role in the big Cambridge Analytical data scandal, which saw some 87 million Facebook users have their data exposed and used to influence political elections.
Facebook’s Response
As reported by Ron Douglas, Facebook has responded by quietly taking away targeting options that were based on sensitive data they don’t want people to know they had in the first place.
These include options built on the data provided by third-party companies like Axiom or Experian. These options are called Partner Categories and are very powerful when trying to target users based on the behaviors they take outside of Facebook. This explains why you may search for shoes on Google and have Ads for shoes appear on your timeline a moment later.
Using Partner Categories, advertisers were able to target people who were frequent buyers, in the market for a new vehicle, in certain job roles, or likely to relocate. This behavioral data was super valuable when trying to meet users with the right marketing message at the right time during the consideration process.
What does this mean for you?
If you’ve been using Facebook Ads for your books, you may wish to consider three changes in regards to your Ad strategy:
1. Use your Facebook Ad pixel more. Stop relying so much on interest targeting and let them optimize your conversions for you by getting as much data into your Ad pixel as possible. The more conversions you have registered in their tracking pixel, the better it is at sending you traffic that will convert.
- While normal Ads are usually too expensive for most of us, video Ads are still relatively cheap because the competition is low.
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You may consider Messenger ads. Messenger has 1.2 Billion daily users but less than 1% of FB marketers are promoting their content in messenger. One of the reasons is that Messenger Ads are more intrusive that timeline ones. You can still use them to great effect, though, if you reach out to your followers instead of strangers.
Happy book marketing!
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I live under a rock, yet hear about this scary stuff! The mind can’t figure out an appropriate stance. What is right, and what is not. These social media giants can null the vote by algorithm, yet they are private enterprise and one may simply decide not to be their client. That seems not to compensate though, because of their weight. And, they stand on a free platform that was to unite us all. Such deception, the gift. Experian, huh? Experience is, they breached. And now, they share. Newly ricocheting from the rock: Facebook to intertwine with banking. Woe is us. Through it all, it behooves us to advertise, hopefully to enrich ourselves some, while multi-mega-sizing them. So they can listen in on us, and waves in circle concentric widen, one day to collapse and strangle us.
You sure you live under a rock? That analysis looks pretty accurate to me. Still, such is the name of the game…
It is. The game.
I keep hearing how great Messenger ads are, but they annoy me. I can’t imagine ever clicking an ad that shows up as a private message. Have you used them with some success?
They annoy me, too. That’s why I haven’t used them yet. But I can see them being useful when you want to notify your followers (and only them) of new releases, free days or a sale.
Hmm…Facebook. I am sure it has its uses for you, Nicholas. But I won’t have anything to do with that platform.
Best wishes, Pete.
It can be fun, actually. My only problem with it is I end up wasting an hour every time Iog in 🙂