Facebook: Source Overview

Everything crucial about your main social network for advertising

Facebook – the most popular social network in the world. The site began its work in February 2004 as an internal social network at Harvard University. Its founders are Mark Zuckerberg and Edward Saverin.

In 2006, the platform became available to all users over the age of 13 and quickly gained popularity. The original purpose of creating Facebook is communication between users. The platform made it possible to exchange messages and files, share information, upload photos and read news. In the future, Facebook, like any other social network, began to be used to promote business. Users were able not only to communicate but also to sell and buy various goods. And on October 28, 2021, the company changed its name to Meta.
In addition to the social network Facebook itself, the company has other services. Among them are Instagram, WhatsApp, and Facebook Messenger.
As of 2023, almost 2.9 billion people are registered on the site. This is a powerful tool that allows you to reach a huge audience and scale your business. No other social network has such a wide audience, a set of useful features and tools. We would like to introduce you to all the possibilities of this legendary site.

Facebook audience

As we mentioned, Facebook has 2.93 billion monthly active users.

Some statistics:

• 43,7% of users are female
• 56,3% of users are male

Age of audience:

• 29,9% – 25-34 years old
• 21,5% – 18-24 years old
• 19,4% – 35-44 years old

Average time spent by the user on the site:

• about 34 minutes a day

You can target to:

• individual countries
• group of countries
• cities
• areas
• radius around a point on the map

TOP 10 countries with the largest number of platform users:

• India – 416.6 million
• USA – 240.0 million
• Indonesia – 176.5 million
• Brazil – 139.0 million
• Philippines – 91.0 million
• Mexico – 78.0 ml
• Vietnam – 75.9 million
• Thailand – 58.5 million
• Japan – 55.8 million
• Pakistan – 49.2 million

Facebook is a popular network among users from the high-income group (earning over $75,000 a year).

Interesting facts:

• People access Facebook primarily from their smartphones, so content and strategy should be mobile-first. Your ads should look good on smartphones
• Video is the most popular type of content on the site. At the same time, videos adapted for mobile devices receive a higher level of engagement.
• 300 million people watch stories on Facebook every day.
• Facebook Average CPC – $1.72
• 1.8 billion people use Facebook groups every month
• The highest user activity on Facebook is observed from Monday to Friday at 3 am, on Tuesday – at 10 am and noon.
• The best time to post content is weekdays, from 10 am to 3 pm

It is important to understand how your audience uses the social network in order to tailor your marketing strategy to it and get maximum engagement and coverage.

Available placements

Placement is where an ad is placed in Ads Manager. All placements belong to 4 platforms: Facebook, Instagram, Audience Network and Messenger. You can use them at the same time or selectively for specific purposes of the advertising campaign. Placement also determines the ad format.

When setting up ads, Facebook suggests that you select “Automatic placements” by default. It is important to choose the placement you need so as not to waste your budget. Your ad will be seen not only on Facebook but also on other sites.

Select the “Edit Placements” tab. Here you will see that the budget is divided into three channels: Facebook, Instagram, and Audience Network. You can exclude the channel you do not need by simply unchecking it.

1. On Facebook, when viewed from a phone and in the app, ads are placed:
– in the news feed
– in the Sponsored tab at the top right of the page

News Feed Advertising
2. Instagram ads are placed:
– in the feed
– in stories

Advertising in stories

Ads in the feed
3. In Messenger, ads are located:
– between chats
– in stories

4. On the Audience Network, advertisers can promote their product to an audience that uses mobile apps outside of the Facebook marketplace.
The advantage of the Audience Network is the ability to connect an application or a mobile site to it, thus gaining increased coverage. Here ads are displayed outside of Facebook:

• website banners
• Search results
• in-stream video

In its ecosystem, the platform offers advertisers a fairly wide range of ad placements. Each placement has its own characteristics: a set of formats and requirements for ads.

Ways to advertise on Facebook

• Advertising with an image. This is the universal and most popular format. Here the image plays the main function and attracts the attention of users. It is not recommended to make the text too voluminous and place it on the image itself.

• Video advertising. A video is used instead of an image. We recommend that you use videos no longer than 15 seconds. Since most users watch the feed with the sound turned off, it is better to add subtitles or key phrases to your video.

• Slideshow ads. Alternative to video ads. Combines up to 10 images, an audio file and a text description. A great option to profitably present the services or products of the company.

• Carousel. This format allows you to show a product or service from different angles, and talk about their advantages and features. You can add from 2 to 10 images to your ad in the given order.

• Collection advertising. Includes an image or video that displays products priced from the catalogue below. This format is effective for engagement.

• Lead Ads (with lead collection form). Advertising is displayed with a feedback form. This format is suitable for lead generation.

Also on Facebook, you can choose different options for the user to go after clicking on an ad

• Website (landing): page view, purchase, registration, form filling
• Leadform: filling out the data collection form inside Facebook
• Instagram Page: Interaction – Likes, Follows
• Facebook Page: Interaction – Likes, Follows
• Messages: direct Instagram, Facebook messenger messages, WhatsApp messages
• Instant Page: a page (landing) created inside Facebook that can only be used for mobile traffic
• App or store page with the app

Current verticals and their features

When launching a campaign, one of the most important points is the choice of vertical. The main directions of white (fully permitted) verticals include:

1. Info business. This direction is very much in demand and popular. The niche is distinguished by a solvent audience, people are interested in high-quality information and good education
2. E-commerce. No less popular niche. E-commerce combines categories such as online sales, internet banking, hotel booking and others
3. Services and FMCG. Items that sell quickly and in high volume
4. Fintech. Services of banks and MFIs. This niche is in demand due to the growing demand for loans
As for grey niches, the main directions for them are:
1. Gambling – casino
2. Betting – sports betting
3. Nutra – means for losing weight, strengthening joints, cosmetics, etc.

The main disadvantage of working with grey niches is the permanent blocking of accounts. Arbitrageurs need special software and certain skills to work with moderation and bans.

Campaign goals and optimization

“Ad Target” is one of the most important settings for a Facebook Ads campaign. The choice of goal affects ad optimization algorithms. Before choosing a goal, you need to think about what results you expect from the campaign. The goal of an ad is the actions that users will take after viewing the ad. There are 6 campaign objectives on Facebook. The choice of the target affects further optimization.

• Recognition. Showing ads to a large number of users to increase company awareness
• Traffic. Drive the most people to your website, app, Instagram or Facebook directory, increase traffic
• Involvement. Attract users who are highly likely to interact with your campaign online, send a message or follow a link
• Lead generation. Displaying the campaign to users who are interested in your product
• Application promotion. Show ads to mobile users who are interested in installing your app
• Sales. Increase in sales

Depending on the chosen goal, a different set of settings, types of ad delivery optimization and formats will be available in the campaign. Facebook’s algorithms will optimize the delivery of ads according to the purpose you select. For campaigns with the “Recognition” goal, the following options for optimization events are available:

• Coverage. Advertising will be seen by the maximum number of unique users
• Impressions. With this optimization, the system will show ads the maximum number of times. Ads can be shown multiple times to the same people
• Increasing ad recall. With this optimization, the system will be tuned so that as many people as possible remember the ad. This means that the system will look for a balance between reaching the widest possible target audience, taking into account targeting, and increasing ad recall by users.
• Thruplay. Suitable when running ads with videos. The system will be tuned to people who are more likely to watch the video to the end
• Continuous 2-second video views. Suitable for ads with short videos. The system is optimized to get the maximum number of views within the first 2 seconds of watching a video.

If you selected the “Traffic” objective

• Landing page views. With this optimization, the system will show ads to people who are more likely to go to the site and download the landing page
• Link clicks. Ad serving is targeted to users who are most likely to click on the ad link
• Daily reach among unique users. Suitable for reaching new audiences. Ads are shown to a unique user no more than once a day
• Impressions. Ads will be shown as many times as possible

When the “Engagement” goal is appropriate

• ThruPlay
• Continuous 2-second video views
• Correspondence. When clicking on the ad, the user will be taken to the Facebook chat
• Link clicks
• Conversions
• Landing page views
• Daily reach among unique users
• Impressions
• Events in the application
• Page likes

The goal of “Leads”

• Conversions
• Landing page views
• Link clicks
• Daily reach among unique users
• Impressions
• Leads
• Leads for conversions
• Events in the application
• Calls. The ability to place a call button in the ad

The purpose of “Promotion of the application”

• Link clicks
• Application settings
• Events in the application. Ads will be shown to those users who are more likely to take the desired action.
• Value. Ads will be seen by those users who make in-app purchases and are interested in your product.

“Sales” Goal

• Conversions
• Landing page views
• Link clicks
• Daily reach among unique users
• Impressions
• Events in the application
• Correspondence
• Coverage
• Calls

It is important that social network algorithms correctly understand what results you need. Accurate selection of the campaign goal allows you to effectively spend your budget. Do not forget that everything needs to be tested and see how different types of optimization work in practice.

On-site targeting

Facebook targeting is based on user behaviour, both within the social network itself and on partner sites.

1. Audience setup

The platform offers flexible settings for the target audience. When launching a campaign, you will be able to select the type of audience to target. For example:

• Saved Audience. Determined by geo-targeting and key socio-demographic indicators
• Look-a-like audiences. Users who have similar interests to your audience and are interested in your product. Please note that when creating a look-a-like audience, you can adjust the percentage of user similarity on the scale. It is best not to set too high a percentage, as this will lead to an increase in the audience. Which means it will be less accurate.
• Custom audience. Based on your pixel data. This is the audience that is interested in your product.

2. Demographics

• Location. From the list, you can select the geographic location of your potential customers
• Age, gender, language. You can create advertisements for different age and gender groups. This will help you better understand how different groups will react to your ad.

3. Interests

It is recommended to select several interests at once so that the audience does not turn out to be too narrow. User interests are divided into different categories, here are some of them:

• Business & Industry
• Food and drink
• Shopping and fashion
• Entertainment
• Family and relationships
• Sports and outdoor activities
• Fitness and healthy lifestyle

4. User behaviour

The “User behaviour” category includes people whose interests the site determines by their actions. For example, the Facebook pixel tracks how users behave on the site: what pages they visit, what buttons and links they click on, what forms they fill out, and other actions.

5. Device and OS

• Mobile devices
• Types of operating systems
• Mobile device models

You can choose to display ads on a specific category of devices (for example, Android), it is also possible to define the range of operating systems used for these devices.

Budget optimization

On Facebook, you can set the overall budget for the campaign or separately for each ad group.

• Campaign budget. If you enable this setting, your campaign budget will be continuously allocated to the most promising ad sets in real-time. This option simplifies campaign setup, minimizes manual budget management, and helps you maximize your campaign’s potential at the lowest cost. The best result can be obtained if there are no hard limits regarding the allocation of the budget to ad groups. You can set spending limits on ad groups, but a large number of limits will negatively affect optimization

• Ad group budgets. You can set up separate budgets for specific ad groups to control the delivery of specific ad groups. Choose this option if you’re using mixed optimization goals and bidding strategies, or if there’s a big difference between audience sizes for different ad sets

For both campaign budgets and ad group budgets, you can choose the time period to which they apply: per day or for the entire duration.

• Daily budget. This is the average amount that will be spent daily on a campaign or ad set. On one day it can spend a little more than the set budget, on the other a little less, but on average it will be the specified daily budget that will be spent
• Lifetime budget. This is the amount that will be spent over the lifetime of the campaign or ad set. The budget for the entire duration is a limited amount, the site will not spend more than the budget you specified

Recommendations for optimizing budgets

• After completing the initial setup, it is not recommended to add ad groups individually

• We don’t recommend manually pausing and resuming ad groups. When you optimize your campaign budget, the system distributes funds among active ad groups. Audience size can affect budget allocation. If your ad group audiences are very different in size, then the group with the larger audience is likely to get more budget

• We don’t recommend pausing ad groups with low impression counts. During optimization, the budget is distributed in such a way as to find all available opportunities for display. Pausing an ad set may result in a CPA increase for the remaining ad sets

• Any change to the budget during the learning phase resets the optimization.

The budget setting depends on the optimization event used. Different optimization events require different costs. The more difficult it is to achieve the result, the higher the budget. For example, optimizing for shopping needs to allocate more budget than optimizing for landing page views.

Site tools

In addition to the standard tools for launching advertising, the following can be distinguished:

• Pixels, custom conversions, and APIs – allow you to make the most of user information for more accurate optimization
• Audience Insights – audience analysis tool
• Creative Hub – creating a variety of creatives inside the site with the ability to see how they will look on different platforms and placements
• Product catalogues where you can download all products from the site at once and selectively advertise them

The Bottom Line

Facebook, like any other social network, has a number of its own features, disadvantages and advantages.

The platform provides access to a huge audience, so the possibilities for promoting your business are simply endless. With Facebook Ads, you can run ad campaigns, use wide targeting options, and create different ad formats and campaign goals.
This all sounds very attractive, but it actually takes a lot of time and effort to launch successful campaigns and achieve the desired results. If you want to get to know the platform and its capabilities better, contact the AdSkill team of professionals. Our agency will promptly provide you with access to agency accounts.

Benefits of agent accounts:

• A personal manager who helps in setting up campaigns according to all the rules of the platform
• Unlimited accounts (no limits on spend)
• Easy account replenishment without the hassle of linking cards
• High trust in agent accounts from the platform
• Support: pre-moderation, reducing the likelihood of blocking; unlocking assets (all resources that we provide – advertising accounts, business pages) or replacing them; technical assistance
• Balance transfers between accounts, withdrawal of balance from the account of a blocked account

Agent accounts are great for launching and scaling your business efficiently.
If you have any questions about promoting your business on Facebook, leave a request on our website or write to us in telegram. Our support team will help and support you at every stage.