Facebook Testing Removal Of Keyword Targeting

on 2011, Blog •March 8th•

Shared by anthony

Wow, this will be interesting to see if this plays out and if Facebook removes keyword targeting from their ad creation process.

Over the past couple days, Facebook has begun a test with a small group of advertisers in which keywords are no longer allowed during the ad creation process; instead, this group is testing a new broad category targeting and it has a number of advertisers enraged.

In response to an inquiry from one advertiser, Facebook sent the following response:

Hello,

Thanks for your email. Broad Category targeting is intended to help advertisers more easily and accurately reach their desired audience using categories rather than individual targeting criteria. This option is currently being tested among a limited set of advertisers. Unfortunately, it’s not possible to opt out of this test.

If you have any other questions related to Facebook Ads, please feel free to let me know.

Thanks for contacting Facebook,

Annie
Online Sales Operations
Facebook

One of the main complaints is that advanced advertisers prefer to be able to enter specific words that will elicit the greatest response. Without what is essentially an infinite number of possibilities, Facebook would restrict the interests advertisers can target, which in turn increase the cost of each interest category.

Whether or not the social network plans on limiting the more robust options to big spenders we aren’t quite sure, and as of now it’s not clear that this is a permanent test. However,m if Facebook decides to go this route, it could theoretically make things more expensive for the smaller advertisers. The screenshot below illustrates the new change, as posted by David Oh.

Interest Categories Screenshot