facebook ads

[solon]

I want to use Facebook Ads to look up the sizes of different market segments, which was recommended in a book I'm reading. I want to look up keywords, "beef jerky" say, and see how many people are interested in it.

But I can't figure it out.

Facebook will allow me to purchase an ad, but there's no where to look up market sizes.

Can someone explain it like I'm 5?

[Kris]

Hm. Well, I use FB ads, and it’s possible the book you are reading is overstating FB’s willingness to provide the data you are looking for.

Do you already have a FB ads account?

Also, can you tell us the name of the book?

[theninthwall]

Could you use Google Trends to perhaps compare searches? Especially for a term as generic as beef jerky you could get some good results (assuming the other term is just as generic). It won’t give you numbers but you will be able to compare.

[ChpBstrd]

FB changes so often any book is probably out of date.

They are steadily pushing the envelope of enshittification. Real innovators.

[solon]

Thank you all for your comments.

If you buy an ad on FB, it lets you target the ad, right? Does it show you the size of the target group?

I don't have a business account so I can't check any of this out personally. I'll get a business account or whatever I need to get, if that's what I need to do.

And yeah, I suspect all this has changed since the book was written. But I still think I remember learning that market size data was available in FB somewhere.

[Kris]

Thank you all for your comments.

If you buy an ad on FB, it lets you target the ad, right? Does it show you the size of the target group?

I don't have a business account so I can't check any of this out personally. I'll get a business account or whatever I need to get, if that's what I need to do.

And yeah, I suspect all this has changed since the book was written. But I still think I remember learning that market size data was available in FB somewhere.

Yes, if you have a FB business account, you can target your campaign at the ad set level by a bunch of different factors. You can narrow your audience by: geographic region (e.g. country, state, city); gender; age range; and interests.

Interests can be further targeted by “and” or “or.” So for example, you can target people who like the TV show Sons of Anarchy *or* Harley Davidson motorcycles if you wanted to sell something that you thought both of those groups would like. Note that these interests are determined by what the FB user interacts with. So in this example, the people FB shows as having those interests would have followed the Harley Davidson brand or the official page for the show Sons of Anarchy.

Alternatively, you can take two targets and narrow the audience by choosing for “and” — so the ad would *only* be served to people who liked *both* Sons of Anarchy and Harley Davidson. You’d do this if you were trying to sell a Jax Teller themed Harley Davidson toy motorcycle for kids, for example, and you figured that the only people who would want such a thing would be folks who liked Harleys but also liked that show.

FB will tell you how large your audience is for this while you are creating an ad set. So you can find out how many people on FB in the UK between 18 and 35 like both Harley Davidson and Sons of Anarchy.

One caveat about FB audiences: the list of “interests” that FB allows one to target is not nearly as extensive as many might think. So, if you’ve got a list of keywords you want to look up, it’s very likely that many or even most of them won’t be terms that FB will allow you to target. And while the list changes over time, it doesn’t seem to really get a lot bigger — and in fact sometimes interests are even removed.

So figuring out keywords or interests to target for FB ads can be frustrating and complex, to say the least.

Does that help?

[solon]

Yeah, that helps, thanks!