One of the best elements of Facebook’s advertising platform – often referred to as Facebook Ad Exchange – is the ability to target specific audiences with customized advertisements. With recent changes and future alterations in the works, the way in which advertisers can target Facebook customers has changed and will continue to offer more options for those who want to interact with their audiences in various ways. Since any addition of demographic data or targeting features is bound to open up a plethora of marketing opportunities, we will discuss some of these changes and what you can expect in the coming weeks and months.

Newest Additions

The biggest rollout of the new Facebook Ad Exchange is the ability to create custom audiences. In the past, marketers were somewhat limited in the options that they could select in order to create a targeted audience, but these new features will broaden the horizon. If you are pinging users based on location and language, then you were limited prior in how you could target mobile audiences with the same campaign. In most cases, you would need to create separate ads. The new custom audience features will allow marketers to be able to overlay these options and create customized targeted audiences for mobile and desktop users alike.

The Tried and True

Not all aspects of Facebook Ad Exchange will be updated or tinkered with, primarily because they already work so well. One of these options is predictive buying, which shows users products and services that are identical or similar to ones that they have recently search for via search engines. This option has been available for several months and continues to remain a popular way in which to reach audiences who are already interested in your products but cannot be manually targeted via current Facebook Ad Exchange options. Users will also continue to enjoy the recently-added hashtag features that allow for even more precise marketing opportunities.

The Benefits for Marketers

Users will now find that any changes or customizations to their campaigns can be made directly via the Facebook interface instead of the demand side platform. These bidding controls will make it easier when you come across a direct response campaign that you want to emulate or modify. The added benefit of layered demographic and location-based data is also a huge advantage for those who had to previously create multiple ad campaigns that on their own were less effective than a layered approach.

Conclusion

As Facebook continues to tweak its marketing options in order to provide marketers with more flexibility and accuracy, there are bound to be a few quirks. This recent update, however, appears to be a well-balanced attempt at providing additional marketing prowess for pinging users that has been long desired by many in the community. You will still have options for predictive buying and other basic features, but the added flexibility of mobile targeting and on the fly editing of campaigns is a welcome addition. As the market for advertising on Facebook continues to grow, we certainly expect to see more beneficial updates to Facebook Ad Exchange in the coming months and years.