Facebook is actively trying to increase transparency across its platform and releasing the new
Chances are you see a lot of their ads and wonder who they’re targeting, and what other ads they’re running alongside what you can already see.
Well, here’s how you can gain some insight into what your competitors are doing.
Facebook’s Info and Ad’s tool
Facebook is actively trying to increase transparency across their platform and releasing the new Info and Ad’s tool is an attempt to assist with that.
While the tool's intent is to show users what ads businesses are running, it does provide significant benefits to you, if that business is one of your competitors.
If you’re a start-up and you’re developing a social media strategy, this should be a key component of your competitor analysis.
Furthermore, you can dive a little deeper and use geographical filters to see what ads are running within different locations.
If you’re start-up and you’re developing a social media strategy, this should be a key component of your competitor analysis.
Facebook Ad Targeting
It’s all well and good to see what types of ads your competitors are running, but how about gaining insight into who they’re targeting?
You can do that too and again, it’s completely free.
1. When you see the ad appear in your newsfeed, click on the three dots in the righthand corner.
2. Click on ‘Why am I seeing this?’
The next screen provides an explanation as to why you’re seeing the ad, as well as some targeting parameters that the advertiser has used to target you. If you see an ad from your competitor, definitely find out why you are seeing it.
Next, click the ‘Manage Your Ad Preferences’ link.
From here, you can click on a specific category and choose an interest. If I click Social Media Examiner (SME), for example (a very relevant ad to our business), it’ll show me example ads that were created by advertisers trying to reach people with interests related to SME. It’s a pretty cool way to see how other people are going after a specific audience and you can use that intel for your own Facebook ad strategy.
Use these tactics to get the most out of your social advertising campaigns.
It’s pretty simple stuff and better yet, it’s free.