The Wall Street Journal recently published a story that caused some alarm in marketing circles: ?P&G to Scale Back Targeted Facebook Ads.? A more representative, albeit longer, headline would have been: ?P&G to Scale Back Highly Targeted Ads in Order to Increase Broader Reach Buys on Facebook.?
According to the WSJ: “P&G two years ago tried targeting ads for its Febreze air freshener at pet owners and households with large families. The brand found that sales stagnated during the effort, but they rose when the campaign on Facebook and elsewhere was expanded last March to include anyone over 18.”
Brand marketers–especially consumer-packaged-goods companies–that need to reach a wide audience through multiple channels, including TV, should use a broad-reach strategy. As the article underscored, Procter & Gamble does not intend to spend less on Facebook, only differently with broader targeting. Advertisers experiment with new precise ad targeting
In the past few years, SocialCode has seen many CPG brands experiment with more precise targeting approaches. For example, the team at Pampers could hypothetically use third-party purchasing data to deliver ads on Facebook to Huggies customers. Or the Pampers brand team could target loyal Pampers customers with messages on Facebook to encourage customer loyalty and the trial of new products in the extended Pampers line.
Buying very targeted, smaller audiences resulted in higher CPMs (cost ...