It may not be the first platform to attempt this: near field communication (NFC) has allowed brands to target those who walk past a store, for example, and Twitter tested a ‘Nearby’ functionality at the end of 2013, but it could be a significant breakthrough in allowing smaller advertisers to target.
Launching the product, a spokesperson for the company said: “With local awareness ads, businesses can quickly and easily find new customers by showing ads to groups of people who are near that business’s neighbourhood.
"Local awareness ads are built to be more cost-effective than traditional advertising channels like newspapers while offering more precise targeting and greater reach. We think they’re the best way for local businesses to reach people near them, and the best way for people who use Facebook to discover more useful things in their area.”
As well as being targeted by area, the ads will also be targeted through the traditional gender and age sector to keep the ads focussed on the desired market. And with a survey of 1,000 US internet users carried out by Zogby Analytics finding that 41 per cent of responders prefer ads targeted to their interests over random ads, surely this will be better for the businesses?
Conor Lynch, paid media manager at We Are Social, thinks so: “Facebook's hyper local ads, targeting those within a certain distance of a business, use the platform’s vast inventory of location-based data, specifically on mobile, to drive more instore activity. It’s another way of reaching users who are using social, and mobile, to inform their purchase decisions.
“It positions Facebook as an accessible method of advertising for the self-serve, small business market, who have the aim of driving footfall in store and tracking offline sales from these ads. Businesses who would have previously considered localised print, can now start to consider a digital alternative.
“The delivery of contextually relevant information to consumers is something that Facebook has the potential to own, and further differentiates it from competitors like Twitter, whose geo-targeting offering is basic, with advertisers only currently able to target by large city."
Recent research from Offerpop found that 92 per cent of businesses planned to spend the majority of their Christmas budget for 2014 on Facebook, with the hope to target the 1.32bn users held by the social site.
Of these marketers, 62 per cent said their main goal was to drive sales and expand brand reach - something the Local Awareness tool looks to increase by featuring calls to action such as directions to the store.
Henry Arkell, group social advertising director at Manning Gottlieb OMD, said: “The UK release date hasn’t been announced [and I’m not holding my breath], but for retailers this means we can begin to reduce wasted impressions and drive increased footfall for every pound invested.
"When combined with Facebook’s other targeting options such as customer data, demographics and financial profile this feature becomes even more powerful. Here at MG OMD we’ll be interested to see how we can scale this for brands with hundreds of store locations and how this ties back to measuring instore sales uplift.”
This isn’t the only addition that Facebook has made to its ad capabilities in the past month either.
Its extension of Audience Network – Facebook’s own advertising system – allows marketers to place ads on other platforms while using the targeting and measurement features that they already use when advertising on Facebook.
Lynch concluded: “The extension of the audience network also ties in with this new ad format, meaning there is extended reach across an increased number of third party apps, within these local areas. Capitalising on the ever-increasing engagement and conversion rates seen across mobile clearly remains the way forward for Facebook advertising.”
