Facebook is testing a new targeting feature for Advertisers. They will soon allow advertisers to target users based on their browser history. In other words, Facebook is going to sell user’s web history to advertisers.
This new service is called Facebook Exchange. Advertisers participating in this service will have ability to target users depending on what website he or she visited recently. This will be a great feature for advertisers and finally add some quality to Facebook ads.
How Facebook Collects User’s Browser History?
They use browser cookies to collect information. This cookie is already in use. But they didn’t share information it collects with 3rd parties up to this point. But they will soon do it. Can you remember a website that doesn’t have a Facebook like button somewhere on site? Well, I can’t. Almost all web sites I visit at least have one like button. Most of them have one like button per page. If you’re already logged in to Facebook, you can simply click this button to like the page without leaving website. That’s because there’s a Facebook cookie placed on your browser. When a like button loaded in website (you don’t want to click it), cookie records all information about webpage in its memory. When you revisit Facebook later, FB will have access to these information and will deliver relevant ads to you.
How This Effects Quality of Traffic?
This will make Facebook traffic super relevant for advertisers. For example, think you wanted to buy an iPad and visited some websites to read reviews about it. If any of that website has a like button or like box in their website, you’ll see ads related to iPad next time you visit Facebook. This is as much as relevant like search traffic.
How a CPA Marketer Can Use This?
I don’t think CPA industry can benefit from this. May be large companies will have chance to participate in the program. But I have the feeling that Facebook will not allow individual CPA promoters to take the advantage of this. According to my knowledge about Facebook exchange, users will be given a choice to opt-in to the program. People hate to see CPA ads. They think its scam (Whom I kidding?). If they continue to see these scammy ads, more users will opt-out from the program. So Facebook will try to maintain very high standards of ads. However it’s just my opinion. Facebook may have other ideas. They have large group of sponsors to feed now.
