On March 19^th, Facebook announced the global rollout of lookalike audiences, a targeting feature that helps advertisers reach new customers and grow their businesses. Just a few days earlier, on March 13^th, TruSignal announced the availability of new, interest-based lookalikes.

Facebook: Lookalike Audiences Launched

For marketers, getting the right messages in front of the right people is key. Facebook‘s new „lookalike audiences“ helps advertisers to identify and reach exactly those potential customers who share similar characteristics with their current ones. This feature will be available in power editor starting this week.

Lookalike audiences further enhances a targeting feature launched last fall called custom audiences, which lets marketers take their current customer lists and show ads to those people on Facebook. Now with lookalike audiences, Facebook can use attributes like interests or demographics and show ads to people who share common attributes as their existing customers. Advertisers can serve any type of Facebook ad to these new groups of people potential customers.

This new type of targeting seems to work very successfully for direct response companies, including lower cost per checkout, lower cost per acquisition, larger purchase size, and faster and increased return on investment.

TruSignal: Interest Based Lookalike Audiences Launched

TruSignal, an innovative digital ad targeting and predictive analytics firm, together with BlueKai, who claims to be the world’s only complete enterprise data activation platform, announced the availability of new, interest-based lookalikes on March 13th.

The new interest-based lookalikes were developed by modeling BlueKai’s powerful in-market segment data with TruSignal’s offline consumer profile data to discover audiences of new users who look like in-market prospects but have not yet raised their hands to indicate current interest through online signals. The new segments are a way to expand existing audience targeting options, giving advertisers the ability to move up the funnel to generate new growth through branding and prospecting campaigns within multiple industries including automotive, financial services and lifestyles.

“BlueKai’s in-market segments are critical for reaching hand raisers who are already in-market and ready to make a purchase decision. The new interest-based segments are a great way to reach another important segment of the market: users who are not presently in-market, but who could be soon,” says Pieter De Temmerman, BlueKai’s GM of Exchange and International. “Whereas campaigns targeting in-market segments are designed to convert existing demand, campaigns targeting audiences modeled on interest-based segments are designed to generate new consumer demand within the right target audience. Together, in-market and interest-based segments complete the entire marketing funnel.”

Interest-based segments improve the efficiency of branding campaigns by reducing wasted impressions on users who are not within the target market. Prospecting campaigns also benefit by driving more highly qualified users down the conversion funnel.

“When it comes to audience targeting, data quality is critical. An effective lookalike audience always starts with the right audience seed,” said David Dowhan, president, TruSignal. “Combining high quality BlueKai in-market data with TruSignal’s 40 different sources of verified, offline profile data enabled us to create very precise audience expansion segments with excellent precision and scale.”

For advertisers looking to generate new demand for tomorrow, the interest-based segments offer a precise and scalable way to reach an audience of users who look like those showing online intent today.

Currently, there are 12 interest-based lookalikes immediately available within five segments on the BlueKai Exchange (under the TruSignal section of the Branded Node): Automotive, Financial Services, Lifestyle, Online Games & Quizzes and Travel. (Sources: www.insidefacebook.com/ www.tru-signal.com)

By Mohamad El Hallak