Today, we're expanding custom audiences to allow businesses to use Datalogix, Epsilon, Acxiom, and BlueKai to further enhance the ads they run on Facebook.

 

Businesses can do this in two ways:

• Businesses that already work with these select third parties can now use the same information they have used elsewhere to create campaigns on Facebook.
• We will work with these select third parties to create pre-defined or custom first-party targeting categories on Facebook. Businesses of all sizes will now be able to target categories like "soda drinkers" or "people who browsed for a specific make/model on my website."

For example, an auto dealer may want to customize an offer to people who are looking to buy a new car. To do this today, many businesses work with third parties to better understand how to identify and reach that audience. With today's updates businesses can now do this same thing by showing ads to people on Facebook who may be in the market for a new car.  

 

As with the existing custom audiences tool, these select partners use a privacy and data-protective matching process. This process is specifically designed so that we don’t share private information about individuals with marketers. People will still have the same control over the ads they see on Facebook. They can learn more about the ads they see, give feedback, or opt-out using the controls we provide in the ads themselves or in the Help Center. To learn more visit our Privacy Page.

 

We know that more relevant ads are better for people and businesses. By showing the right ads to the right people, businesses have been able to increase the effectiveness of their Facebook campaigns. For example:

• Castle Auto Group, a car dealership in Chicago, saw a 24x return on their ad spend combining Facebook offers with custom audiences to their existing target customers
• Kingnet, a Hong Kong-based game developer, saw a more than 40% decrease in cost-per-installs of its action role-playing game by using custom audiences

We believe the extension of custom audiences to include select third parties will further improve marketers' ability to reach the right customers on Facebook and will lead to more relevant ads. We will be rolling out these enhancements over the coming weeks, starting with marketers in the U.S.