What You Need to Know About Facebook Advertising

Advertising has been changing consistently ever since it was first monetized. Within the past 10 years, advertising has moved from magazines and newspapers and found its way into the media. Now, most of the advertisements that we see are localized on social media pages like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, as well as streaming locations like Youtube and Hulu. For some sites, advertising is complicated. For others, such as Facebook, they make sure that the advertisements meet both the needs of the company who has chosen to advertise and the convenience of the customer. To help you better understand Facebook advertising, here’s what you need to know in order to navigate the process and chose the best advertisement for your business.

How Facebook Advertisements Work

Facebook advertisements allow you to pick the price that you want to spend on the ad. Then, they compare your price with the prices of the other advertisements that other companies are paying for in order to fairly distribute the ads. They place the ads so that they will be seen by your target groups and the quality of the ad. Facebook works to ensure that its users are disrupted as little as possible from their experience and so the ads are targeted to the groups that would enjoy the ads. They use the viewing history of their users to determine who would enjoy the ad and who would find it frustrating.

Types of Advertisements

There are 8 main types of Facebook advertisements that companies typically use. These are Domain Ads, Carousel Ads, Offer Ads, Video Ads, Lead Ads, Canvas, Sponsored Mentions, and Dynamic Ads. Each of these is used for a different purpose.

The Domain ads are used to get clicks to your website. It’s a simple ad with one main picture. You can include optional text above the picture to encourage people to visit your page.

Carousel Ads includes several images that the viewer can scroll through. If one catches their eye, the viewer can select the image and it will take it to your website where the image is featured. Facebook will automatically have your most-clicked-on image appear first in the series of images to encourage more people to make their way to your site.

Offer Ads are a tool that you can use for those who are already familiar with your business. It includes a discount code and a deadline and directs customers to your page.

Video Ads are used for brand awareness and targeting. Facebook will track for you how far people watch into your add so you can target them again with future ads based on the how much of the video they watched.

Lead Ads are perfect for helping the customer download apps or sign up for newsletters from the company. It doesn’t require the person to leave Facebook and automatically fills in the person’s information if they’re interested.

Canvas is an interactive ad that encourages the customers to get a more complete view of the product that you are showing to them.

Lastly, Sponsored Mentions are when you and another company “team up” to get content out to both of your audiences. It includes a “with” tag and both companies are mentioned.

When to Use Facebook Ads

If you’re considering using a Facebook ad, you most likely want to create further awareness for your product. Depending on the product that you’re gaining awareness for, you might need to go through another few steps before you can advertise on Facebook. If you’re selling any type of medical equipment, medication, or prescribed drugs and therapeutic biologic products you will be required to first have the product screened through the FDA Adverse Event Reporting process to ensure that the products are safe and reliable. Once this process is finished, you can move onto creating awareness for the business.

You should use Facebook Ads to create awareness for your Facebook page or website, to generate page likes, gets clicks to your website, to create conversation, to encourage people to install your apps, and to encourage people to attend events. You can use the advertisements for a variety of reasons to help people trust your business and learn more about your products.