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Facebook new Lookalike Audiences, lets advertisers target potential customers similar to current ones

Facebook new Lookalike Audiences, lets advertisers target potential customers similar to current ones | MarketingHits | Scoop.it

Facebook on Tuesday announced “Lookalike Audiences,” a new feature for advertisers that is rolling out to power editors this week. Contrary to its name, the new targeting tool doesn’t let marketers only sell ads to a certain group of people based on how they look, but instead lets them “reach potential customers who share similar characteristics with their current ones.”


Facebook lists five ways advertising to similar customers can benefit businesses: fan acquisition, site registration, off-Facebook purchases, coupon claims, and brand awareness. The company says it has been testing lookalike targeting with select businesses for a few weeks now, and the new tool “worked well” both online and offline.


Once businesses get access, they can choose to optimize any type of Facebook ad for “Similarity” or “Greater reach”:

Brian Yanish - MarketingHits.com's insight:

Narrowing down that targeted buyers will save businesses $ in ad spend and make Facebook tons of $$$ as they sell your information. What do you get in return, family photos and a deal on a new pair of shoes.

Martin (Marty) Smith's curator insight, March 19, 2013 9:32 PM

Segments Plus

We Internet marketers work hard to create personas and segments. I think of personas as ABOUT THEM and segments as ABOUT US. Personas classify customers into banded archetypes. Segments group based on internal metric similarity such as "VIPs", "Multi-Buyers" and Recency Frequency and Monetary groups.

If those segments sound like direct marketing it is because DMers are masters of segmenting. The seesaw is to balance personas or how to talk to THEM in relevant ways with segments or how to make sure the way you speak to THEM is also profitable for YOU.

Segments are internal ideas. You can't segment customers who don't visit your website become a customer (in some way). UNTIL NOW, Facebook's new tool says EXTEND your segments into our data. Cool idea since chances of converting are increased significantly if you already KNOW the segment.

This is because not all segments are equal. If Facbook can identify those potential customers most likely to become multi-buyers that information is VALUABLE.

The value of extending a winning message, offer or design to potential customers who should be positively disposed to any of those things is similar to the way catalog merchants cross index lists. Cool that Facebook has created "lookalike audiences" and should be worth a few bucks to marketers who can extend their segments into the great unknown that seems less unknowable now.