Facebook Custom Audiences Just Got Smarter with Blueshift’s AI

In the rapidly evolving world of mobile devices, social media and the always-connected consumer, marketers want to get their messages out and amplify them quickly. Now more than ever, Lester Wunderman’s* principle of “communicating with each customer as an audience of one” takes on a new level of importance. And this means getting the right message, to the right person, at the right time on the right channel.

Facebook’s recent policy changes to prioritize content from friends over those from businesses puts even more pressure on us marketers because our content is going to be de-emphasized. This means we need to do more to get the same value from our ad impressions. And while Facebook has given us the basics of targeting in their Ad network with techniques like Custom Audiences, in today’s world, this is not enough.

Custom Audiences just got a little brighter

Custom Audiences is a targeting technique that enables you to upload a list of customers and prospects with their email addresses that Facebook then uses to find and serve your ads to them on its network of properties. Facebook can also use its data about a Custom Audience profile to find similar audiences. A nice feature that improves targeting and reach of episodic Ad campaigns of the “Wunderman” era but falls short in today’s fast changing environment. At Blueshift, we’ve taken this idea to the next level. We use our Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques to enable you to create dynamic segments that we call Predictive Audiences and use them as Facebook Custom Audiences for your Ad campaigns on Facebook. You immediately benefit in three important ways:

1. You get highly relevant Predictive Audience segments that are created using AI and machine learning techniques that evaluate hundreds of variables over large data sets to create highly targeted dynamic segments. You can now create ads that directly speak to these groups.
2. Your Blueshift Predictive Audiences can be synced with your Facebook Custom Audiences in real-time ensuring that as people move through the buyer’s journey, your ads on Facebook remain relevant to the stage they are in. For example, a visitor to your site who has browsed your catalog should see different ads from a prospect that is yet to look at your catalog. But once the casual browser becomes more interested, your message should change accordingly.
3. You can run similar multi-channel campaigns simultaneously across email, mobile, website and Facebook using the same Predictive Audience segments to drive engagement. This way you have a relevant message that reinforces your brand across channels

With declining organic reach and increasing Ad prices, marketers need to keep innovating

As the Facebook network keeps growing and their policies shift towards favoring friends over organizations, business reach will continue to decline. And just as with property in Manhattan, San Francisco and Mumbai, when supply drops and demand increases, prices go up. This is clearly reflected in ad prices on Facebook. A recent study by Adstage reports that Facebook CPMs (cost of impressions) increased 171% and CPCs (cost per click) by 136% while CTRs (click through rates) remained unchanged in 2017.

Source: Adstage (https://blog.adstage.io/2017/09/18/facebook-cpms-increase-2017)

The only way for marketers to beat this trend is to out-think and out-execute the next guy. At Blueshift, we’re here to help you do both.

See Also

• See our press release announcing Predictive Audience Syndication for Facebook
• More about Lester Wunderman, the father of direct marketing (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lester_Wunderman)
• Adstage research on Facebook advertising (https://blog.adstage.io/2017/09/18/facebook-cpms-increase-2017)