Facebook has recent push for better on location advertising has come through recently, as the site’s new system for targeting advertisement to users for businesses in their local area has now gone live.
The new system allows small businesses and shops to pay to advertise to people within a small mile radius area, with adverts showing up on Facebook users phones and within web browsers. The new ‘local awareness’ ads will soon go live in the US, with worldwide users seeing the feature arrive over the next few months.
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The move has been expected for years, with Facebook acquiring local advertising pushing services as far back as 2011, and Facebook staff proposing the feature in 2012. Facebook’s massive user base and constant location updates have now made the feature a reality.
In order to target their advert to local users, businesses need to identify certain parameters, such as age range, gender and radius to the site, as well as the normal process of adding a photo and flavor text to their advert. A smart feature included in the new system also allows businesses to choose whether their ad can show users the location of their business, with directions coming in through Google Maps and popping up in a separate browser page.
Obviously this is a great feature for small local businesses to get customer awareness out, especially for shoppers from outside the local area, by notifying them of their presence through their mobile. If you’ve never been to a town or shopping area before, the feature can be of a great use if you’re a fan of certain shops or certain products.
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Facebook’s next step is to combine the feature with their next generation ad service, which could in future could mean that shops you’ve been to before could hit you up with adverts that bring in customers who have been there before.
Whilst targeted advertising remains a controversial feature of the social network, Facebook users could start to benefit from targeted ads that come closer and closer to their individual needs, as opposed to being based on guesswork or one time page likes and visits. The feature should be fully implemented by the end of the year.
Via: Techcrunch