After a long wait, Facebook’s has finally launched its much acclaimed Partner Categories to advertisers in the UK, the eagerly awaited behaviours gives a wealth of targeting data to advertisers.
Facebook already gives advertisers incredible targeting options, such as age, sex, location, interests, employment status, parents, travelling intent, mobile device users and as a result advertisers can create precise target audiences.
What are partner categories?
Partner Categories are essentially customer profiles which have been collated from data which exists outside of Facebook, by marrying up this profile information with Facebooks own data, they know things like how many cars your household has, if you are a homeowner, your purchasing intent, insurance policy renewal dates etc.
Why the big deal?
One of the key factors to Facebooks success as an advertising platform is that it offers advertisers an unrivalled choice of customer targeting options based on Interests, Page Likes, Lookalike audiences and audience behaviour.
Facebook’s Partner Categories takes advert targeting to a whole new level, the social media giant has partnered with 3rd party data provider Acxiomin (UK) to provide advertisers with offline customer profile data.
As a result advertisers now have access to a new set of super charged user behaviours such as purchasing intent, above average spenders, home owners, renters plus a bunch of stuff which can help us target customers who already have their wallets half open.
How will this benefit advertisers?
Facebook already gives advertisers incredible targeting options, such as age, sex, location, interests, employment status, parents, travelling intent, mobile device users and as a result advertisers can create precise target audiences.
With Parnter Cateogories Facebook have served up a game changer, say for example you are a luxury car dealer, could you imagine having the ability to target potential customers with an “Above average level of spend” who are “Likely to buy a new car”, with Partner Categories you can do exactly that.
Are they available to everyone?
At time of writing this article…. No.
However it seems to be rolling out to advertisers, so expect to see it on your Adverts Manager or Power Editor anytime now.
Partner Categories are available in both Ads Manager and Power Editor under the behaviours section of the Advert Sets.
How to use it – an example!
Partner Categories sound amazing, but how can you use this data for your business or for your clients? Well here are a couple basic examples.
Example – Promote/Sell Paid TV Subsciptions
Possible Audience:
25 – 65+ Males
Partner Categories
Residential Categories (UK) -> Homeowner AND/OR Private Renter
Purchase Behaviour (UK) -> Owns a Flat Screen TV AND/OR an HDTV
Purchase Behaviour (UK) -> DOES NOT subscribe to a Pay to View TV
If you are Sky or Virgin Media, a target audience this specific is a golden goose, as you can target an audience whom are not yet customers, but own all the correct equipment to receive your service. Therefore you are not wasting your advertising budget advertising to existing customers.
Add to mix categories such as “Above average level of spend” in some of the other partner categories and you could be targetting potential customers with more disposable income.
Furthermore, this same kind of profile can also be used by retailers looking to sell Sky or Virgin media subscriptions, and going further still retailers with bricks and mortar stores have the ability to further target customers within a predefined radius of their stores.
Over to you…
Let us know in the comments below how you will be taking advantage of the new Partner Categories.
