TARGETED SOCIAL MEDIA ADVERTISING

Now it is more and more difficult to meet a person who does not have an account on one of the social networks - VK, Facebook, Instagram and other platforms have firmly established themselves in our daily lives, becoming constant sources of educational and entertaining content, communication, news and many other activities. Therefore, a large audience with a huge range of interests is a great opportunity for a business to find its client. This is where targeted advertising can help.

How does targeted advertising work?

Targeted advertising, as it is also called, comes from the English word "target" - goal, target. Such advertising allows us to "target" the user of the social network we need based on certain characteristics, such as gender, age, geographic location, interests, behavior, etc.

Targeted advertising prompts the user to perform some targeted action - go to the site, place an order, leave contact information, etc. This type of advertising is considered quite effective and inexpensive since, in addition to paying for clicks, you can choose to pay for the number of impressions, and only those interested in the advertised product or service see the ad.

Targeted and contextual advertising

Many people confuse these two types of advertising on the Internet due to the similarity of the principle of their work. What is the difference between targeted and contextual advertising?

• Placements: contextual advertising ads are placed directly in the search results of Yandex and Google and on their partner sites, while targeted advertising is found on social media advertising services.
• Display conditions: search contextual advertising is shown to the user according to the request entered, while targeted advertising is shown based on information about the user.
• Target audience: the audience of search contextual advertising is "warm" or "hot"; such users are looking for specific products and services. The targeted advertising audience is usually "cool" or "cold." There is no exact information about the desire to buy a product or order a service, only the assumption that users may be interested in this.
• Format and content of ads: in contextual advertising, there is a very poor choice of ad formats and severe restrictions on both design and content, while targeted advertising allows you to use videos, ads, and various graphics and place them in the format of posts, carousels, banners and others.

Advantages and disadvantages

The main benefits of targeted advertising include the following:

• Flexible settings and, as a result, greater coverage of the target audience - due to the correct set of parameters, you can ensure that ads are displayed only to those who may be interested in them.
• Quick Start – It takes an average of 20-25 minutes to create a simple ad and moderate it.
• Low entry threshold - you can launch targeted advertising with a very small budget, which is a huge plus for small businesses.
• Personalization of ads - due to flexible targeting, you can create unique advertising creatives that will easily attract the target audience's attention.

In addition to many advantages, targeted advertising still has certain disadvantages. Among them are:

• Strict advertising policy of sites: each social network has its list of areas whose advertising is prohibited on their site. Such restrictions can be caused both by prohibitions at the legislative level (tobacco and alcoholic products, weapons, psychotropic substances, etc.) and by the social network's requirements. A list of topics for which supporting documentation may be required. For example, a license for the relevant medical activity is required to advertise medical services.
• Customization subtleties: As paradoxical as it may sound, the ability to fine-tune targeted ads is both a plus and a minus. The slightest mistakes can significantly affect the budget and not give the desired result.
• Persistence and involvement: like contextual advertising, targeting involves constant monitoring of the effectiveness of advertisements and timely adjustments. In addition, the audience of social networks is characterized by rapid burnout - any advertising creative gets bored pretty quickly, no matter how good it is. Hence, it needs to be updated regularly.
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Targeted ad formats

How many social networks are now, and so many different formats of targeted advertising? Most of them are found in one form or another in all social networks. The most popular are universal (native) posts, stories (stories), carousels and text-graphic blocks. Do a closer look at each of them.

1. Universal Posts are a format of targeted advertising in the form of a regular post marked as an "advertising post." As a rule, this is a small text with an appeal and a photo or video. This type of advertising is used in VK, Instagram, Facebook and other social networks.
2. A carousel is an ad block in which an advertiser can offer several of their goods or services at once, usually from 3 to 7 pieces. Photographs or banners represent goods with a small description and, in some cases, a price. Viewing all products is implemented through "scrolling" the blocks, and at the bottom of each, there is a button with a call to action (buy, sign up, subscribe, etc.). You can see the carousel on Instagram and VK.
3. Stories are a growing ad format on Instagram. Targeted advertising in stories (stories) are colorful static or video banners that users of the social network Instagram see while switching stories from one user to another. A link to the landing page is attached to the banners, which can be opened with a swipe.
4. Text-graphic blocks are small ad blocks that many have seen on the left side of VK pages and the right side of Facebook. They are a block with a prominent title, a small description and an image. They are shown only in desktop versions of social networks. Despite the rapidly growing mobile traffic, they are still popular. 

Types of social media targeting

For ads on a social network to be shown to the right range of users, you need to "target" them. To do this, you must decide on what characteristics (or targets) we will collect for our audience. Most types of targeting are universal for advertising platforms, for example:

• Socio-demographic: gender, age, marital status, education, employment, etc.
• Geographic: city, district, region, etc.
• Interests - data collected by the advertising system based on the user's actions in the social network (likes, subscriptions, adding certain content, purchases, etc.)

You can set up targeted advertising using various technologies, the most popular of which are:

• Parsing - using the so-called parsers, you can collect and organize user data according to selected parameters.
• Look-alike - automatic selection of an audience similar to the one already created. Based on previously collected data - age, interests, geolocation, etc.
• Retargeting is setting up ads for users who have interacted with the company: viewed products or services on the site visited the company's pages on social networks, etc.