Facebook has just launched a new retargeting tool called "website and mobile app custom audiences." It allows a business to show Ads to people who have either visited their website or their mobile apps. All businesses have to do is affix a tracking system to their website and apps. and they are ready to roll. The great thing about this new update is it gives the business access to their mobile inventory rather than only having Ads run on the right side of the audiences desktop news feed.
On top of that, it now allows a business to specifically target people based on their gender, geography, age, and marital status. This wasn't possible for Facebook Exchange, or FBX. The new custom audiences will also be able to remind users that they considered buying a certain item and then link them back to the site where they can shop some more and complete a purchase.
Although this new custom audience tool is great, it's important for a business to not get rid of FBX just yet. FBX is still the only tool that has "predictive buying," which means that if a customer was looking at pink dresses, then they might be shown an ad for red shoes. To get the full benefit of targeting an audience, it would be wise to use both the custom audiences and the FBX together. An example of how they could be used together is: "A travel client will use FBX to retarget people who've gone searching for hotels and then show them that exact hotel [they saw]. They'll use custom audiences to reach people who are searching for hotels, but have not downloaded their mobile app on iOS 7 on iPad."
There also will be an option for users to opt-out from targeting based on its own tracking of website and apps visits. To find out more about Facebook's new retargeting tool here.