How it Works: Facebook Audience Network
At Squirrels&Bears we believe in simplicity and we like to provide clear answers to your questions. In our #howitworks series we focus on simple explanations of various aspects of marketing, highlighting the basic facts, what works and what doesn’t work. And we hope to make your life a little easier.
The Basics:
The Facebook Audience Network is a collection of websites and apps, pre-approved by Facebook, where ads can be shown. It offers a much greater reach for your Facebook ads by appearing on a number of different third-party apps and platforms.
It connects your ad with people who have already shown interest in your business, whether they're loyal customers or people who have used your app or visited your website.
While the click-through rate can appear significantly lower you have the added benefit of increased targeting options and custom audiences. It does work best if your Facebook ads already generate good results.
You can have a variety of ad styles embedded in the participating apps. These include native ads, which are great for a more organic feel, full-screen ads, video ads, banner ads and playable ads.
You can set up and access all of your preferences, including the list of publishers, through Facebook Business Manager and Ads Manager.
Do:
Follow the Facebook for Developers Get Started Guide, this will guide you through the process step by step to setting up your account.
Create a ‘Blacklist’ of publishers, here you can add low quality app publishers or just those that do not meet your target audience requirements. Doing so should improve the overall performance of the ad.
Use click-worthy calls to action, for example ‘Sign up for Free’, as well as offers and promotions that might encourage impulse buying. This will likely improve your conversion rate and keep your ad prices down due the cost-per-click rate.
Utilise ads for your app if you have one. This way you have an opportunity to get in front of heavy app users and the beauty of this is they don’t even need a Facebook account to click through, they are led direct to your business.
Don’t:
Rely solely on Facebook Audience Network to attract new customers, it is most effective when your Facebook ads perform well so if you are not yet at that point it is best to build momentum in that area first.
Waste time with generic ads, in-app users are there for a reason whether it be to catch up on the news or switch off with a game depending on where your ad appears. If the ad lacks engaging content you will struggle to lure them away.
Forget to keep up to date on the ad metrics, in particular the Delivery Reports which can be found in the Ad Manager under brand safety. This way you can identify where your ad is being placed and eliminate and irrelevant publishers.
Worry about your ads being placed on spammy apps or those that might contain adult or unethical content e.g. gambling apps. Facebook has very strict rules for the publishers that make their list.