Over the past couple weeks I’ve been writing about hints of new targeting features for Facebook Ads. As of today, those features have gone live. This evening Facebook posted a note on the Facebook Ads page about three new filters: Connections, Locations, and Birthdays. We already posted about the multi-country advertisements but not about the additional two filters: connections and birthdays.

Connections enable advertisers to target members of groups, pages, or events that they own or target those users that are not already members. This avoids having ads show up for people that have already joined. Facebook is also now enabling advertisers to target those individuals who’s birthdays it is. These are extremely powerful targeting features that I’m sure advertisers will welcome.

Currently there are no advertising platforms (that I’m aware of) that provide this level of targeting capabilities. With these new features, Facebook will be able to increase revenue while increasing the effectiveness of ads. One thing that has been challenging for Facebook is to receive high conversion levels but with these new targeting features, creative advertisers will be able to increase their conversion levels.

One group that can also benefit from this new ad platform is application developers. Want to get new users that aren’t yet using your application? Now you can exclude all users of your existing application and only target those that haven’t installed it. This is something that as far as I know, no cost-per-install networks are able to provide yet. Facebook has been heavily focused on improving their advertising offerings over the past few weeks and with this latest announcement, it’s clear that Facebook is looking to provide powerful tools for all advertisers.