Tags

, , , , ,

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.

2. While normal Ads are usually too expensive for most of us, video Ads are still relatively cheap because the competition is low.

3. 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!