Facebook location targeting demystified

A few years ago, when you chose a location target on Facebook, you naturally assumed you were targeting people by where they lived. That worked for local businesses and nearly anyone except travel-related companies.

But if you were selling rooms for a Las Vegas hotel, knowing where they live or where they currently are doesn’t help you much. By the time the prospect is in Vegas, they’ve already made their travel arrangements. And targeting people who like Las Vegas wasn’t helpful, either.

In the last year, mobile traffic on Facebook has exploded.
Nearly 70% of the Facebook traffic for the Golden State Warriors is from mobile.
And that’s made location super important, yet super confusing.

You see, somebody might live in San Francisco, but work in Menlo Park (at Facebook headquarters).

They might be traveling to New York on business.
They could be at the SFO or OAK airports.

In each situation, they’re in a different state of mind (trying to check into the flight, chilling on a Sunday afternoon, busy at work, etc…)
And each of these is driven by location, largely on mobile.
Dayparting, the ability to turn ads on and off at certain hours or days of the week, isn’t enough.

So now Facebook has significantly enhanced location targeting, especially if you’re targeting audiences in the United States.
And you can use most of these features without needing to request special access.
You can even use them in combination with your custom audiences, interest targets, and so forth.

If you’re a retailer or local store, you better be paying attention here.
This new location targeting applies across all ad objectives– website conversions, boosting posts, check-ins, video views, etc…

You can target a country, state/region, DMA, city, ZIP or postal code or a specific business address.
And you can even exclude a particular state/region, city, zip or postal code

Apply radius from a business address or from the center of a city.
Just be careful when you’re doing this in a major metro, like NYC, where another mile could add in a few million people.

According to Facebook directly, there are four ways advertisers can choose to reach people within a location:

• (Default in FB Interfaces) Everyone in a location: People who live in that location as stated on their Facebook profile (“current city”) as well as people who have that location as their most recent, based on information from their mobile device.
• Recently in a location: People whose most recent location as is the selected area, as determined by information from their mobile device. This includes people who live there or who may be traveling there.
• People who live in a location: People whose stated location from their Facebook profile “current city” is within that location. This is also validated by IP address and aggregate information about their friends’ stated profile locations.
• People traveling in a location: People whose most recent location is the selected area, as determined by information from their mobile device, and are greater than 100 miles from their stated current city from their Facebook profiles.

Grab their two page guide here.
If you’re not in the United States, international postcode targeting is rolling out in 31 other countries, so hang tight.

Consider the kinds of stuff you can now do:

• Golden State Warriors fans who check in at the Oracle Area, but live in San Francisco– make them proud of the new arena being built in Mission Bay.
• Alcatraz tours and other sightseeing companies targeting people who have just landed at the airport (zip code plus 1 mile radius).
• T-Mobile targeting Verizon in areas where their service is weak, with different messaging for business travelers, casual tourists, and residents.
• Hillary Clinton targeting people who are on the fence about her, have made political contributions in the past, but just live in zip codes that matter to her.
• You’re moving your store to a new location and want to advertise to people who live and work there.
• Downtown food trucks in Portland, Oregon or cruise ships in Fort Lauderdale want to attract the tourists who have have excess cash, but not waste money on residents.

Are you thinking about the possibilities beyond just the default?

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Dennis Yu

Dennis Yu is the co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of BlitzMetrics. He is an internationally recognized lecturer in Facebook marketing, having been featured in The Wall Street Journal, New York Times, LA Times, National Public Radio, TechCrunch, Fox News, CBS Evening News, and AdWeek. Dennis has held leadership positions at Yahoo! and American Airlines. He studied Finance and Economics from Southern Methodist University and London School of Economics. Besides being a Facebook data and ad geek, you can find him eating chicken wings or playing Ultimate Frisbee in a city near you. You can contact him at dennis@portage.co.

Latest posts by Dennis Yu (see all)

• Buying links gives way to buying influence– is it the same game? - June 10, 2015
• Facebook location targeting demystified - February 4, 2015