Over the past couple days, Facebook has begun a test with a small group of advertisers in which keywords are no longer allowed during the ad creation process; instead, this group is testing a new broad category targeting and it has a number of advertisers enraged.
In response to an inquiry from one advertiser, Facebook sent the following response:
Hello,
Thanks for your email. Broad Category targeting is intended to help advertisers more easily and accurately reach their desired audience using categories rather than individual targeting criteria. This option is currently being tested among a limited set of advertisers. Unfortunately, it’s not possible to opt out of this test.
If you have any other questions related to Facebook Ads, please feel free to let me know.
Thanks for contacting Facebook,
Annie
Online Sales Operations
One of the main complaints is that advanced advertisers prefer to be able to enter specific words that will elicit the greatest response. Without what is essentially an infinite number of possibilities, Facebook would restrict the interests advertisers can target, which in turn increase the cost of each interest category.
Whether or not the social network plans on limiting the more robust options to big spenders we aren’t quite sure, and as of now it’s not clear that this is a permanent test. However,m if Facebook decides to go this route, it could theoretically make things more expensive for the smaller advertisers. The screenshot below illustrates the new change, as posted by David Oh.
Smart move. Essentially they are trying to now refrain from playing Google's game. A think a dab at educating advertisers that there is life beyond keyword based advertising.
Comment by Gaurav Singh Kushwah — March 8, 2011 @ 6:18 pm
Not to mention it eliminates one of the most compelling reasons to advertise on Facebook: the ability to target a super-segmented group of people!
I wonder if this has something to do with user pushback on being targeted? Which is silly, because each user decides what information to make public!
Comment by @unicornbooty — March 8, 2011 @ 10:52 pm
Categorisation while potentially useful for a lot of people should ALWAYS be an option.
Forcing anyone to use it drastically reduces the appeal of Facebook / Opengraph which has always seemed to promise granular micro-segmentation. Facebook making very broad assumptions about my target audience sounds exactly like traditional Behavioural Targeting on a traditional display network. Yuck.
Furthermore the matter of fact tone of the email further underlines the typical arrogance we are growing accustom to from Facebook. No sympathy, no explanation. For pete's sake, give the guy an option to opt out if other people have this choice.
Comment by The Foreman — March 9, 2011 @ 6:55 am
Bold move Facebook. You are, in effect, punishing the folks that know and promote your platform the most, because they understand the nuances and how to get effective and cheap keywords. You are not too big to fail.
Comment by @codydamon — March 9, 2011 @ 10:02 am
It's a great move for facebook. They know that most of their highly profitable revenue comes from agencies and big brand social experts who buy mostly for fans and social spend, not direct marketing. The people who really care are arbitrage affiliates and in-house direct marketers and most of the big brands don't have good in-house experts– they rely on third party agencies. At this point Facebook knows it's the only real player for demographic targeting left. Why give everyone everything when they don't have to.
That being said direct ads spend is a larger portion of the pie– I think they want to move it the other way around. Take a look at their reporting tools– unless you want to use excel and tediously segment out your direct ads spend vs social or unless you have multiple accounts, it's hard to know what's working or not. They also got rid of conversion tracking for off site conversions.
Comment by David Oh — March 9, 2011 @ 11:40 am
wow, this is such a bad move. facebook is taking a step back instead of progressing. This is going to affect a lot of advertisers.
Comment by Viral Future — March 9, 2011 @ 2:07 pm
WHAT?! This move will kill the platform…
Comment by spanky — March 9, 2011 @ 3:49 pm
Looks like they just added ability to switch back! =)
Comment by David Oh — March 10, 2011 @ 1:36 am
That would be terrible for a lot of smaller advertisers who have really been helped by the ability to microtarget. Why not let us have the tools that are available to better target? Yanking targeting tools out of our hands smacks of greed and authoritarianism. Don't take options away!
Comment by @vickivanv — March 10, 2011 @ 3:01 am
What will they do next, force users into choosing only select things to be interested in. What if I like being interested in something that is misspelled?
I think that the fact they went back on their plan to force users to beta test this is very telling. They rarely think before they do these sorts of tests. I'm still waiting for the ability to opt-out of the new (useless) all-campaign view of their advertising manager that I was invited to use.
Comment by Mario — March 10, 2011 @ 1:46 pm
If they have this as an option great. If they force it and remove the individual targeting then this will kill it.
Users will get less quality ads, advertisers will pay more for their ads and lower CTR. This is a step backward
Comment by ash — March 12, 2011 @ 8:35 pm
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