Facebook's adding a new ad targeting option which will enable business to target whole households at once - which may be a little creepy for some.
Beginning their push ahead of the coming shopping season, Facebook's announced the new family targeting option as part of a range of new tools, which also included new enhancements for their Dynamic retargeting ads.
Family targeting works by using Facebook's data to understand where people live, and who they live with, in order to better target ads to that group.
How does Facebook do this?
How FB figures out if people live in the same place https://t.co/uqLI6xBSwj pic.twitter.com/3xFmUlmrKq
- Tim Peterson (@petersontee) June 27, 2017
Given this, they can no doubt get pretty targeted - hence, there's a level of 'creepiness' involved. But for advertisers, the option makes good sense.
For example, by using household targeting, travel advertisers could focus campaigns on each member of a household, helping to enhance awareness of a specific destination or offer. People in a household may discuss similar topics, share similar interests or be purchasing items for the same upcoming event. And there's also household products which can be promoted to each member - if all members are seeing similar ads for such items, they could be more likely to lean towards a particular brand or offer.
In addition, as noted by The Next Web, the option could also facilitate exclusions where relevant:
"Some products are only needed one in a household. e.g. If someone in your house has already bought a Sonos speaker, ads won't target the other people because people aren't likely to buy more than one Sonos for a household."
Essentially, the option further enhances your capacity to reach the right people at the right time - but of course, in order to do that Facebook also needs to demonstrate a little bit more of the insight they have available on users.
In addition to this, Facebook's also adding more data on the number of households reached, with a new suite of household measurement insights in Ads Reporting that show how Facebook campaigns drive results across various household members.
As per Facebook:
"These metrics provide information on how many households are reached by advertising and at what frequency. They will allow businesses to better attribute conversions that occur within a household and understand how Facebook ads may impact the conversion behavior of various household members, not just the person seeing the ad."
And if you're a little creeped out by Facebook focusing on your family life, you can opt out of household marketing by removing yourself, or your family members, from the "member of a family-based household" category in Ads Preferences.
In addition to the new ad tools, Facebook's also released a new set of holiday data trends to get businesses thinking about their upcoming campaigns, including a range of stats on mobile and online shopping adoption rates.
It may feel early, you may not necessarily want to be thinking about the upcoming holiday season just yet. But the best way to ensure you've covered all your bases is to get planning early.
Household marketing is now available in the U.S., with planned expansion to other regions within the next year.