Introduction to Facebook Advertising

Introduction to Facebook Advertising

Advertising on Facebook is one of the most efficient ways to connect with your target audience online. Did you know that 96% of social media marketers consider Facebook the most effective social media advertising platform?

In the past years, social media advertising has grown into a highly popular marketing channel, helping businesses to get new leads and turn them into paying customers.

So how does Facebook advertising work?

Boosted Post

A boosted post is the most basic advertising you can do on Facebook. They are created by allocating a budget to a post already publised on your Facebook Business Page in order to get more reach.

Boosting the post allows you to ensure a much larger audience of your choice sees the post in their news feed. Boosted posts are typically used when the goal is to achieve audience engagement such as post Likes, shares and comments.

Boosted Post Audience Targeting

  • People who like your Page
  • People who like your Page and their friends
  • Custom Audience (You can target: Location, Age, Gender and Interests)

If you’re looking for a more customised promotion option, this is where Facebook ads might work better for you.

Facebook Ads

Facebook ads are a more advanced way to advertise. They allow you to target your content to a much more defined audience in various areas throughout Facebook’s network. When you stop running the ad, it ceases to exist – unlike a boosted post, which will remain on your Facebook Page.

Facebook Ads can appear in News Feed on desktop, News Feed on mobile, and in the right column of Facebook on desktop.

Right Hand Column Ad

This type of ad is the most traditional on Facebook, it appears on the right side of a user’s Facebook News Feed.

Desktop News Feed Ad

News Feed Ads appear directly in a user’s news feed and are likely to get higher engagement metrics due to its native advertising features.

Mobile News Feed Ad

Like the Desktop News Feed Ad it appears in the user's mobile feed and looks like an organic post from a friend or a page that they follow.

Note: A Facebook Ad does not appear on your business page.

Ad Creation and Management

Ads are created via the Facebook Ads Manager dashboard.

Compared to Boosted Posts you can additionally select:

  • Language Targeting
  • Behaviour Targeting
  • Ad Scheduling
  • Call to Action Button
  • Optimised Bidding
  • Multiple Images
  • Instagram Ads
  • Right Hand Side Ads

4 Components of Successful Facebook Ads

For brands, posting on Facebook alone isn't enough anymore. Sure, you can throw money at your efforts to drive people to your Facebook Page and send them to your website, but that only works if you're smart about it.

There are four main components of a good Facebook Ad, or any ad, really regardless of its type.

Visual

Not only is visual content treated more favourable in the Facebook ad algorithm but it is also most likely to be shared and remembered.

Relevance

Relevance is critical for any ad. If you are showing ads that are not relevant to your audience you won’t get any returns.

In February 2015, Facebook launched a feature in the Facebook advertising platform that rates your ads and gives you a relevance score, similar to the Ad Rank in Google AdWords.

The more relevant your ad the higher the score and the more favourable Facebook will treat your ads.

Value Proposition

A value proposition tells the reader why they should click on your ad to learn more about your product.

A clear call to action

Without a clear Call To Action (CTA) your target audience might not know what to do next.

Facebook Ad delivery system - Ad auctions

One of the things that has set Facebook apart from other media platforms is the information it has about its users. Facebook was able to develop an ad platform that took advantage of actual, real information as opposed to guesses and estimates of who was looking at the page, where they were coming from.

Any user has around 1,500 stories they could see each day. Facebooks News Feed ranking algorithm's job is to determine which of those stories should be shown highest on each user's News Feed.

When showing Ads Facebook is trying to balance two things:

  • Creating value for the advertiser by helping them to optimise reach and results.
  • Providing a relevant experience for people using Facebook.

The best way for Facebook to achieve this is to hold an auction in which both interests are represented. The goal is to match the right ad to the right person at the right time. An auction takes place whenever someone is eligible to see an ad. The ad that wins an auction and gets shown is the one with the highest total value.

What factors are considered in an auction?

Total value isn't how much an advertiser is willing to pay us to show their ad. It's combination of 3 major factors:

  • Advertiser bid
  • Estimated action rates
  • Ad quality and relevance

Advertiser Bid

You represent how much you value the result your ad set is optimized for with your bid or Facebook can do it for you with automatic bidding.

Estimated action rates

Each ad set is optimized for an action. Estimated action rates represent how likely Facebook thinks a given person is to take that action. Facebook bases their estimates on the previous actions of the person you're trying to reach and your ad's historical performance data.

Ad quality and relevance

Facebook represents how interested they think a person will be in seeing your ad with measures of its overall quality and specific relevance.

For example, if your ad has gotten lots of negative feedback, that can decrease its total value. Or, if the person has a history of being interested in what you're advertising, that can increase its total value.


We hope this blog post could give a brief overview on how Facebook advertising works.

Always remember in online marketing, there’s no one-size-fits-all guide or tips.

Want to know more? Contact us to chat to one of our online marketing experts.