Advertising on

Facebook
How to drive action online, in-store and
in mobile app for measurable results

February 2017
 Sixty percent of people on Instagram
say they discover new products on the
platform, while 75% say they’ve taken
action after being inspired by a post.1
As people discover information,
products and experiences in this
fashion, advertising strategies have to
change to keep up. Businesses need to
understand the new ways people are
showing interest in a product. With
Facebook’s Family of Apps and Services,
advertisers can reach more people, to
achieve their objectives.
People are spending more time on
mobile and this is changing how people This guide will provide an overview of
discover and connect with businesses, our advertising products, and how to
products, and services. get more out of them.

1  Instagram user survey, November 2015

Advertising on Facebook: Products 02

Contents

04   The Facebook Family of

Apps and Services 09  Auction and delivery

05   Planning your campaign

11  Targeting

06   Getting started on Facebook

13  Designing your ad

07   Choosing the right objective

20  Measurement

08   Buying types

23  
Getting started with
advertising on Facebook

Advertising on Facebook: Products 03

 The Facebook Family of Apps and Services enable you to run ads
across Facebook, Instagram or Audience Network, on mobile and
desktop. Our ad placement options—the places where you can
run ads—let you grow your reach with precision.

More places
Reach people on their favorite apps and websites with ads Facebook Instagram Audience Network
across Facebook, Instagram and Audience Network.

Reach people across

Across devices Reach 1.9 billion
Reach 600
1000s of mobile apps
million people
Show your ads on whatever device your audience happens and websites
to be using, with ad placement options for mobile or desktop.

Fewer steps Reach people where they

Reach people off
spend a majority of their
Running ads across platforms and devices is easy. of Facebook
time on mobile
Just build your ad once, then select Facebook, Instagram
and Audience Network under Placement. No resizing
or reformatting required.

Advertising on Facebook: Products 04

Planning your What are my business goals?
Match your goals to the objectives available to you, such as acquiring new

campaign
customers, driving in-store sales or increasing awareness for a new product.

How will I measure and track results?

As you plan your campaigns on Before launching your campaign, identify the key performance indicators
(KPIs), or what’s important to define the success of your campaign.
Facebook and Instagram, start by
asking yourself a few questions
It’s not too early to set long-term goals for your program. Consider metrics
such as lifetime value (LTV), downstream value, average order value (AOV) and
share of new customers and how your media strategy could affect your long
term goals.

Who is my audience?
You can use existing segments, or build new audiences, based on your
campaign objectives so you can deliver the right message to the right people.

The answers to these questions will define your strategy and help you measure
the effectiveness your advertising campaigns across the Facebook Family of Apps
and Services alongside other marketing channels.

Advertising on Facebook: Products 05

Getting Leverage your 1st party data
The best audience consists of people who know your brand.

started on • Implement the Facebook pixel on your website or our Facebook SDK
with App Events on your mobile app. These tools will help measure
conversions, optimize delivery, and build audiences based on actions

Facebook
people take on your site or app

• Use an existing customer list to build audiences of people who have

already engaged with your brand

These are optional tools that Determine your creative

will help you access some of Use any existing creative you have, like videos or product imagery, or

Facebook’s advanced advertising determine if you need to develop new creative for your Facebook campaigns.

products designed to get the

most out of your campaigns Pull in your product catalog
To use dynamic ads, which targets users who have expressed interest in
specific products on your site or app, use your online product catalog to
build your ads.

Include your store locations

If you want to drive people to your store, make sure you can link your store
location to your ad.

Advertising on Facebook: Products 06

Choosing the
Facebook and Instagram’s solutions can track actions across devices through
the entire purchase journey; from gaining top of mind brand awareness,
generating demand for a product, acquiring a customer who is demonstrating

right objective
intent to buy, and finally making the sale or taking an action.

When building your campaigns, map the objectives to your goals:

Awareness
Your campaign starts with choosing
Build top-of-mind-awareness, equity, affinity, and consideration
an objective. The objectives you
• Brand awareness
choose depend on the needs of
• Local awareness
your business, or the goal you have
• Reach
for your campaign. For example,
during a growth phase, focus on Consideration
brand awareness and customer Generate interest, demand and purchase intent for products, services
or promotions, both online and in-store
acquisition. When thinking about
• Traffic • Video views
profitability, focus on driving
• Engagement • Lead generation
transactions and conversions
• App installs

Conversions
Encourage people to complete transactions with your business

• Conversions

• Product catalog sales

• Store visits

Advertising on Facebook: Products 07

Buying types Reach and Frequency
To run successful brand campaigns, you need to reach your audience
often enough to get your message across. Reach and Frequency buying
on Facebook and Instagram lets you accurately plan and deliver campaigns
with predictable reach and controlled frequency. You can control not only
the frequency, but also the order people see your ads. You can access the
sequencing tool in your Ad Set after you have created your ads. If your brand
or product has more relevance for people at certain times of day, you can
schedule your ads to reach them during the most impactful times.

Reach and Frequency buying gives you predictability and control over your ad
delivery when reaching audiences of more than 200,000 people.

Auction
The ad auction determines which ads should be shown, so advertisers can
reach audiences that are more likely to react to their content. The ad auction
takes into account your bid, the likelihood of driving a desired outcome, your
site performance, ad quality, and how relevant your ad is to the targeted audience.

TRP
For video ads, TV buyers can now extend and complement TV campaigns by
buying Target Rating Points (TRPs) on Facebook and Instagram. TRP Buying
gives predictable delivery of TRPs that are verified on-target by Nielsen.

08
Auction and delivery
Set the right bid Choose the right audience
There are two options for bid setting: Choosing the right audience makes a big difference in delivery of your ad set.
Use a specific audience to reach people who will engage with your content.
• Automatic – our ad auction system will adjust your bid to generate the The estimated reach numbers in the ads create tool will help determine if
most desired actions possible with your budget. If you don’t have a the targeted audience is too broad or narrow.
specific value for the desired customer action, use this type of bidding

• Manual – you decide on the value of the desired action. Start with a bid
that represents how much you value the action you’re optimizing for.
Tips for choosing an audience:
Lower bids may reduce the number of people in your target audience
who see your ad • Use interest and/or behavior-based targeting categories

• If you’re optimizing for website conversions or mobile app installs • Retarget website visitors or existing customers using Custom Audiences
and want to specify a manual bid, you can choose to set an
“average” bid or a “max” bid. • Build Lookalike Audience based on your high-value customers

Your audience range should match your ad’s objective. Use a broad
Determine the right budget audience for brand awareness ads and a more specific audiences for direct
response. If your ad is not delivering as often as you’d like, expanding the
To ensure smooth delivery, your daily ad set budget should be greater audience size can help.
than your bid. If you are using conversion optimization, your ad set budget
should be many times greater than your bid.

• Tip: If you’re not getting the [volume of] results you want, try increasing
Be mindful of audience overlap
your bid
Audience overlap means multiple ad sets are delivering to audiences that
contain the same people. The ad auction tries to avoid showing too many
• Note: Splitting your total budget across too many individual ad sets
will make optimal ad delivery more difficult ads to the same person from a single advertiser over a short time period,
so audience overlap might explain why some ad sets are not hitting the
full budgets.

• Tip: To avoid audience overlap, use the audience building tips from
the previous section. Another option is to consolidate your ads into
a single ad set with a larger budget

Advertising on Facebook: Products 09

Select flexible placement
options, such as Instagram
and Audience Network
When you set up your ads to run across Facebook, Instagram, and the apps
and sites in Audience Network, we’ll optimize the delivery of the ads according
to your objective and budget. This will help drive more of your desired outcome
with the same ad set budget.

Improve your relevance score

and feedback
If your ad gets little positive feedback or even negative feedback, its delivery
may be affected. If that’s the case, review your ad’s relevance metrics in ads
reporting and adjust the targeting so the ad reaches the right audience.

Test and iterate

The ad auction is a dynamic marketplace. The best campaign performance and
delivery requires testing and iteration. However, as you adjust any of the levers,
keep in mind that it takes our ad auction system some time to register changes.
Give the system time to update your delivery before making further changes.

Advertising on Facebook: Products 10

Targeting
Core Audiences
Created by location, demographics, interests and behaviors, Core Audiences
enable you to reach a broad audience with interests relevant to your
campaign objectives.

Custom Audiences Engagement Custom Audiences: identify and reach people who have
viewed a video, engaged with a Canvas ad, or started filling out a Lead
Custom Audiences enables you to connect with your most valuable Ad form.
audiences. It is a key targeting capability to reach existing customers
and prospects. A variety of data sources can be used to power Custom Enhance your email or direct mail campaigns: Use Custom Audiences
Audiences: CRM data, Facebook pixel, and the mobile SDK. from a data file to complement a direct mail campaign. Reach customers
who don’t open email, or amplify your direct mail message by reinforcing
it on Facebook.
How to get the most out of your Custom Audiences
Search campaign: Find your customers before they search for you. Use
Mirror Custom Audiences segments to your existing audience segmentation:
Custom Audiences from your website or mobile app to uncover intent
Custom Audiences works best when specifically targeted to a particular
earlier in the purchase funnel to maximize search spend.
group of your customers. Leverage what you already know about your
customers, for example if they’re loyalty members or cart abandoners, Target customers that have demonstrated intent to purchase: Implement
and tailor messaging to personalize the experience and encourage action. the Facebook pixel on your website and/or the Facebook SDK in your
mobile app to gain insight into customer intent. With that data, you can
Build Custom Audiences segments based on where your customers are target people based on the specific actions taken on your website or mobile
in the funnel: Custom Audiences provides a way to adjust your marketing app, and reach them on Facebook. Advertisers can segment audiences by
strategy depending on how familiar your audience is with your brand, and pages visited, time spent, frequency of their visits, device used, and more.
where they are in the purchase funnel. With Custom Combinations, you can Remarket to people who abandoned their shopping cart with messaging
build rules and layer on customization to only include visitors of specific that drives them back to purchase. Or cross- or up-sell to people who
pages. Segment audiences by pages visited, time spent, frequency of their recently purchased items on your website or mobile app.
visits, device used, and more.

Advertising on Facebook: Products 11

Target customers across devices: Facebook can target across device to drive
conversions. Consider cross-device conversions to ensure you’re sending
Lookalike Audiences
the right message to the right people on the right device based on where Lookalike Audiences allow you to reach new people who share similar
they are in the conversion funnel. For example, if you know your customers characteristics with customers that have expressed interest in your
are more likely to convert on desktop, target with clear calls to action on the business. You can use Lookalike Audiences to reach people similar
web. You can view your cross-device conversions by enabling the cross- to your Custom Audiences and page fans.
device view in Facebook ads reporting.

Use quality data to build your Custom Audience: When using Custom How to get the most out of your Lookalike Audiences
Audiences from a data file, you will have a better match rate with people
on Facebook when using higher quality data (e.g. complete email Use your website visitors: Using data from a Facebook pixel, you can
addresses, newer data, etc.). find people who are similar to those that have demonstrated high intent,
recently visited, or converted on your website to drive more sales.

Use specific seed lists to build Lookalike Audiences: Use seed lists that are
specific to the objective you want to achieve, such as people who tend to
convert online versus offline and find people who look like them.

Use existing customer list: Build your Lookalike list based on existing customer
traits to reach new users.

Audience size slider: Start by optimizing your Lookalike Audience for similarity,
to understand how your ads perform with more precise matching. Keep in
mind: 1% is optimized for similarity and top 5% is optimized for reach.

INSTAGRA M T I P!

Instagram’s total audience is smaller than Facebook’s. Start

with broad targeting and refine over time as you learn which
audiences convert. For example, consider starting with a
5 or 10% Lookalike Audience and narrow down to 1% as the
system learns to deliver the outcomes you care about.

12
Designing your ad
Media
P H OTOS OR VIDEOS

Photo ads use compelling imagery to engage your audience on Facebook,

Instagram or the Audience Network.

Creative considerations
Use product imagery when targeting people who have viewed products
on your website.

Test different creative strategies such as product imagery or lifestyle imagery

to see which works best for your brand.

Platform tips

Across Facebook, Instagram and Audience Network, use high quality,

immersive images that are unique to your brand to capture attention.

Create a clear call to action to direct behavior.

For a complete list of specs and recommendations for each platform

please visit:

Facebook Page Post Engagement: Photo Ads Guide

Instagram Page Post Engagement Ads Guide

Audience Network Design Guidelines

Advertising on Facebook: Products 13

Video ads are an engaging way to bring brands to life through sight, sound,
and motion in the Facebook News Feed, and on Instagram. Promote videos
that show behind-the-scenes footage, product launches or customer stories
to raise awareness about your brand.

Creative considerations
Capture attention quickly with your visuals – start with your more captivating
content and incorporate your brand identity early

Design for sound off – tell your story visually and use text and graphics
to help deliver the message

Frame your visual story – explore different frames and highlight key elements

Play more – experiment with your content with types of creative and length
to see what resonates

Platform tips

Across all platforms, use strong visuals across to capture attention as people
scroll through their feeds.

FACEB O O K
Create a strong call-to-action buttons to drive action after they view your ad

Visit our Video Ads Guide for a complete list of specs and recommendations

If you do not choose a call-to-action, the Learn More call-to-action that links
to your website will automatically appear below your ad

IN STAG RA M
Visit our Instagram Video Ads Guide for a complete list of specs and
design recommendation

Advertising on Facebook: Products 14

 Display
SIN GLE
Use a single image with minimal text to capture attention

Creative considerations
Use your branding or imagery unique to your brand to increase
brand recognition

Use bold photography or art to take advantage of the real estate

on the news feed

Create a strong focal point in your image to clearly communicate

what you’re selling or providing to people

Platform tips

FACEBOOK
Across Facebook, Instagram and Audience Network, use high quality,
immersive images that are unique to your brand to capture attention

Use a clear call to action to direct behavior

Advertising on Facebook: Products 15

 C AROUSEL
The carousel format can showcase up to 10 clickable images or videos in a single ad unit – can go
up to 30 images when using Dynamic Ads in the carousel. This format gives you more creative real
estate in Facebook, Instagram or the Audience Network to showcase your brand and products.

Creative considerations
Create a theme for images in your carousel to tell a story

Test different creative strategies such as storytelling, product imagery, or lifestyle imagery
to see which works best for your objective

Platform tips

FACEBOOK
Include an optional offsite site link, or call-to-action (CTA) button, to drive action after they’ve
scrolled through your products. Option to use video or multiple CTAs. You can also create cards
automatically by providing the URL of your website – this will allow you to run multiple campaigns
will little effort in set-up

IN STAGRAM
Tell deeper stories and share more images with your audience. People who see carousel ads can
swipe to the left from the initial image in feed to see additional images and a link to your website
with a button

Advertising on Facebook: Products 16

Formats

C A N VA S LINK ADS LE AD ADS MOBI L E A PP A D S DYN A M I C A D S

Canvas is an immersive Direct people off of Capture intent from Reach mobile users to drive Dynamic ads enable you to
creative format that creatives Facebook from any people interested in your quality installs for your app, automatically promote one or
a native experiences within device to a specific product or service within feature products, and to more relevant products from
the Facebook app location on your website the Facebook or Instagram create app engagement to your catalog to drive people
app increase revenue and lifetime to your website,
value of your customer base app or store

Advertising on Facebook: Products 17

 LINK ADS

Call to Action
Shop Now, Book Now, Learn More, Sign Up, Download, Watch More,
Contact Us, Apply Now, Donate Now, Request Time

Tips

Take advantage of the large, clickable real estate to attract attention and
show your brand

Link ads are great for driving offsite conversions because the entire image
is a click target, rather than one small link
C A N VA S Use video, carousel or an image to showcase your product or service

Call to Action Platforms

Shop Now, Book Now, Learn More, Sign Up, Download, Watch More,
Contact Us, Apply Now, Donate Now, Request Time

Tips LE AD ADS
Storytelling comes to life: build your Canvas using a combination of videos,
Call to Action
still images and call-to-action buttons.
Apply Now, Download, Get Quote, Learn More, Sign up, Subscribe
Designed for mobile: Leveraging the same technology used to display
photos and videos quickly in the Facebook app, Canvas was built to bring Tips
content to life in a fast-loading and seamless experience Pre-populate the form with relevant contact information like name
on Android and iOS. and email address
Flexible for any objective: Have complete creative control to achieve
Useful for e-commerce, education, local, elderly care, financial services,
any objective like telling your brand story, promoting a new movie,
auto, B2B tech, CPG, professional services, and telco advertisers
showcasing products or installing your app.
Platforms
Platforms

Advertising on Facebook: Products 18

M OB I L E A P P A D S DY N AM IC ADS

Call to Action Call to Action

Install Now, Book Now, Download, Learn More, Listen Now, Play Game, Shop Now, Book Now, Learn More, Sign Up, Download, Watch More,
Shop Now, Sign Up, Watch Video, Watch More Contact Us, Apply Now, Donate Now, Request Time, Get Directions,
Send Message
Tips
Tips
Include visuals of mobile devices
Advertise all of your products – import your entire product catalogue
Demonstrate the value of the app with statistics (i.e. how many songs they to Facebook so you can automatically promote any product from your
can access on your music app) inventory

Showcase what the app does Reach people interested in your products – reach audiences on Facebook,
Instagram or the Audience Network who have already expressed interest in
Platforms your brand, and send them back to your website or app

Cross-sell and up-sell – cross-sell by promoting complementary products

to people who have recently purchased on your website or mobile app.
Up-sell by promoting similar products they expressed purchase intent in,
but have higher conversion values

Access the pixel through your eCommerce platform – if your website

is powered by an e-commerce platform like Magento, Shopify or
BigCommerce, Facebook makes it easy to install the Facebook pixel,
create a product catalog and run dynamic ads. Learn more

Platforms

Advertising on Facebook: Products 19

Measurement
Measure campaign performance and understand results with people-based
measurement solutions that help you:

• Measure based on real people

Facebook helps marketers see • Measure the metrics that matter to your business

results clearly by providing • Measure across everything

people-based tools tomeasure

your audience, brand and Measurement Solutions
sales outcomes, allowing you AUDIEN CE OUTCO M ES

to connect the dots between Use these measurement solutions to:

your online advertising and true • Understand how many people you reached with your ads

business results. • How many times you reached them

• Determine if your ads reached the right people

• Determine if your ads reached people across devices

Facebook ads reporting

Use Facebook ads reporting to measure people-based metrics for ads served
on Facebook, Instagram and Audience Network. Create and export reports via
Ads Manager, Power Editor and Ads Insights API to see your most important ad
metrics and learn how you’re reaching your business goals.

Split Testing

If you want to understand how different aspects of your ads affect campaign
performance across Facebook, Instagram and Audience Network, try a split
test. Run controlled A/B tests with no audience overlap; get clean, single-
variable tests; easily measure results and optimize ad performance.

Advertising on Facebook: Products 20

Audience Insights Brand Lift
Learn more about your target audience on Facebook with Audience More accurately measure the effect of your ads on your brand, through
Insights, including demographics, lifestyle, interests and purchase behavior Brand Lift on Facebook and through partners including Nielsen and
of your target audience. Find out what’s unique about your audience, so Millward Brown. All three solutions use the same underlying gold-standard
you can create more relevant content. methodology: experimental design, comparing poll responses from the
audience exposed to your ads to a holdout group who didn’t see your ads.
Reach reporting:

Measure how many people were reached by your ads, how often they were
S ALES OUTCOM ES
reached across devices and how much each publisher contributed to your
Use these measurement solutions to:
campaign’s unique reach.
• Determine if you caused a customer to take a desired action, such as
Nielsen DAR/TAR buy a product, sign up for a service or download your app

Measure and compare audiences reached for online and TV campaigns with
Facebook conversion reporting
Nielsen Digital Ad Ratings (DAR) and Total Ad Ratings (TAR).
Use Facebook’s conversion reporting to measure online and offline conversions
Viewability and verification partners based on people-based metrics for ads served on Facebook, Instagram
Measure and verify viewability and attention metrics for Facebook and and Audience Network. Create and export reports to see your most
Instagram inventory through best-in-class viewability partners. important ad metrics and learn how you’re reaching your business goals.

Facebook Conversion Lift:

B RA N D O U TCO ME S Facebook’s Conversion Lift enables you to measure the true impact
Facebook ads have on real people. Using conversion lift, you can determine
Use these measurement solutions to: the additional business driven online, offline or in their mobile app from
people reached by Facebook ads across devices.
• Determine if your ads generated awareness for your brand
Partner lift
• Understand if your ads shifted the perception of your brand
Facebook’s partner lift integrations leverage best-in-class vendors to
measure lift in sales using partner-based ROI measurement solutions.

Advertising on Facebook: Products 21

Attribution

Use various attribution models to help advertisers understand how their campaigns drive online, offline
and cross-device conversions across their entire digital media spend.

Multi-touch attribution (MTA) partners

Facebook enables MTA partners to provide people-based MTA reporting across publishers, including
Facebook. Gain a better understanding of the ROI across publishers, including on desktop and mobile
and make more accurate investment decisions across all media and channels.

Marketing mix modeling (MMM) partners

Facebook enables partners to better measure and compare the effectiveness of your marketing channels by
contribution to sales, efficiency and ROI.

Mobile Measurement Partners (MMPs)

Working with Facebook’s Mobile Measurement Partners (MMPs) will help you more accurately measure
your Facebook mobile app ad campaigns, making it easier to understand how Facebook drives installs
and revenue for your app compared to other ad networks.

Advertising on Facebook: Products 22

Getting Checklist

started with
Identify your advertising objectives (page 6)

Review their existing data and assets (page 7)

advertising Optional:
 Implement the Facebook pixel, SDK, or offline conversions
to capture actions and conversions across your website, app, or store

on Facebook Determine
 your Facebook ad objectives, and how you want your
ads delivered (page 8-10)

Define the audience you want to target (page 12-13)

Design your ad (page 14-19)

Measure performance (page 20-22)

Advertising on Facebook: Products 23

 We hope you found this guide informative and actionable. Facebook is uniquely
positioned to help you reach your audience, no matter how broad or specific.
With our catalogue of powerful direct response tools, we look forward to
helping you reach your campaign objectives. Now that you’ve completed this
guide, use our Advertising on Facebook by Business Objectives to learn
how to leverage our products for your specific marketing objectives.

For more information, please visit https://www.facebook.com/business

Advertising on Facebook: Products 24