Facebook launches acquisition ad tool
Facebook has launched a new advertising tool designed to help marketers reach new audiences who share characteristics and interests with their current fanbase.
![Facebook ad](https://marketingweek.imgix.net/content/uploads/2013/03/facebook-product-similar-audience-2013-460.png?auto=compress,format&q=60&w=460&h=328)
The social network says “Lookalike Audiences”, which went live globally today (20 March), will help brands acquire new fans, build awareness, grow registrations with their sites, increase coupon redemption and ultimately sales.
Lookalike Audiences is an addition to Facebook’s “Custom Audiences” tool it launched late last year, which allows marketers to take information from their current customer databases – such as email addresses, user IDs and phone numbers – and present those customers with ads on Facebook.
With Lookalike Audiences, marketers can serve any type of Facebook ad to potential customers who share the same interests or demographic groups as their existing customers. Marketers can optimise Facebook ad campaigns to these groups for two options: “similarity” or “greater reach”.
“Similarity” will include the top 1 per cent of people in a brand’s selected country most similar to their custom audience, while “greater reach” includes the top 5 per cent of people similar to their current audience.
Facebook has been testing the tool for “a few weeks” with a select group of brands. Specifically, it says a trial with design company Fab.com drove a “wide range of success metrics” including lower cost per checkout, lower cost per acquisition, larger purchase size and faster and increased return on investment.
The social network says it will not share any personal information with advertisers.
In January Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg told analysts he was particularly excited about the work the company was doing around Custom Audiences to improve targeting and relevance to show users content they care about and designing better ads beyond links, texts and images.
Last year Facebook launched Reach Generator, an ad tool designed to help brands acquire new fans to their pages, but the format was dropped just months after launch following criticism from marekters about its effectiveness.