Brand owners advertising on Facebook will soon be able to tailor their ad campaigns to specific postcodes, allowing multiple target ads to be uploaded at once.
Postcode targeting has been one of the staple techniques of direct and email for years, although it is understood this is the first time a social networking site has offered such a facility.
The new feature will be available on the Sponsored Story ad package, which was rolled out in January. The scheme highlights the activity of friends who have interacted with a given brand on the site. For example, if one of your friends visited Tesco on Facebook, the retailer could buy an ad that highlights that fact on the right hand side of the page as you navigate the site.
Although optional, many users of the social networking site will include their city or postcode in their profile information; and it’s with this that marketers will be able to target more accurately. Previously marketers could target users by city or town.
One Facebook advertising platform provider has claimed that Sponsored Story ad units have click-through rate that’s 46% higher than standard Facebook ads. TBG Digital conducted a test over ten days and 2 billion ad impressions, which showed that the Sponsored Story ads performed better in terms of click-through rate and cost per click.
