Facebook is a powerful social media platform that offers one of the most effective ways to reach your target audience. Since 2015, Facebook advertisers have been able to choose from three different buying types that allow you to optimize your campaign. In this article, we’ll take a look at the different options available and discuss how you can use them to maximize your ad spend.
What are Facebook Campaign Buying Types?
Facebook’s campaign buying types can be broken into three broad categories: Auction, Reach and Frequency, and Target Rating Point (TRP). These categories are somewhat misleading since the realities of Facebook ad buying mostly exist across two major dimensions: which targeting you choose to focus on and whether you’re doing CPC or CPM advertising.
So, to provide a more comprehensive understanding of Facebook’s ad buying options, we’ll first explain the broad categories of Auction, Reach and Frequency, and TRP.
Auction Buying
Let’s say you’re a retailer promoting a new product line on Instagram. You want to target users who are interested in fashion and beauty, and you have a budget of $500 for your campaign. Using auction buying, you can set your targeting criteria to include users who have shown an interest in these topics, and you can set your bidding strategy to optimize for link clicks. As the campaign runs, you can monitor the results in real time and adjust your settings as needed to maximize the performance of your ads.
Key Points
- Auction buying is a campaign buying type available on Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and Audience Network.
- It’s recommended for campaigns on Facebook or Instagram and is the default buying option in Ads Manager.
- With auction buying, advertisers have more control over their campaigns, allowing them to make specific choices about their audience, get cost-efficient results, and adjust campaign settings in real time.
- The ad inventory is sold through a real-time bidding system, where advertisers bid for ad placement based on the target audience and campaign objectives.
- Advertisers can use targeting options such as age, location, interests, and behaviors to hone in on the most relevant users for their campaigns.
- Auction buying allows advertisers to get the most value for their advertising spend by paying only for the ads that are actually served to users.
- By using real-time monitoring, advertisers can optimize their targeting and bidding strategies to achieve the best possible outcome for their campaign.
Overall, auction buying is a great option for advertisers who want to have greater control over their campaigns and achieve their objectives in a cost-effective way.
Reach and Frequency Buying Type
Reach and frequency buying is a type of advertising strategy that allows advertisers to plan and purchase their campaigns in advance with predictable ad delivery and greater control over frequency settings. With this approach, advertisers can ensure that their ads are seen by a specific number of people and control the number of times their ads are shown to each person. Unlike other buying methods, reach and frequency buying allows advertisers to pay a fixed price for the inventory placement they reserve, giving them more control over their advertising budget.
Key Points
- Enables planning and buying campaigns in advance with predictable ad delivery.
- Works well for exposure-based objectives like awareness, engagement, and traffic.
- Delivery systems include sequencing, retargeting, and ad scheduling.
- Sequencing tool allows arranging up to 50 ads in a specific order to tell a story.
- Retargeting delivers new ads to an audience based on their previous interaction with ads.
- Ad scheduling allows controlling when and how ads appear.
- Offers more control over frequency settings with flexible frequency caps for any objective.
- Predicts overall reach and locks in the CPM price for impressions.
- Optimizes dynamically between the objective and impressions.
- Allows targeting audiences multicountry or very small and excluding dynamic audiences.
- Reach and frequency buying targets audiences one country at a time, no fewer than 200,000 people, and does not allow excluding dynamic audiences.
Target rating point buying
The latest trend in advertising is the use of target rating point (TRP) buying. TRP buying allows companies to extend their TV campaigns onto Facebook and Instagram, creating a more integrated and cohesive marketing strategy.
Key Points
- TRP buying is limited to eligible campaigns only, and allows companies to plan and buy video campaigns using Nielsen-verified TRPs.
- With TRP buying, companies can measure impressions as a percentage of the population they want to target ads to.
- TRP buying is available on Facebook and Instagram, and allows companies to buy video ads in the same currency and manner as other ads on those platforms.
- TRP buying allows companies to optimize their ads toward Nielsen on-target delivery, ensuring that their ads are being seen by the right audience.
- TRP buying requires a minimum audience size of 200K and a minimum spend, and can be bought up to six months in advance.
- TRP buying is not available in all countries.
In conclusion, Facebook’s campaign buying types provide advertisers with a range of options to optimize their ad spend and achieve their campaign objectives. Whether you’re looking for greater control over your campaigns, predictable ad delivery, or a more integrated marketing strategy, Facebook offers a buying type that can meet your needs. Understanding the differences between these buying types and their key features is essential for maximizing the value of your advertising spend on Facebook and Instagram. By leveraging these buying types, businesses can create highly targeted campaigns that reach their desired audience and achieve their marketing goals.