Facebook already has hugely powerful targeting options due to the wealth of data they possess on their users.  Yesterday, they took this a step further with the launch of the ability to target users based on what they studied, or based on what they are currently studying.

This move allows advertisers to target:

  • Anyone who studied in a certain field,
  • To specify to target those who have already graduated college who have studied in a certain field
  • To target those who are in college studying a certain field, with when their graduation year will be
  • To target users in high school studying certain fields

These options are only available in Power Editor under the ‘Advanced’ section of the audiences tab.  The menu for choosing the targeting looks like this:

Power_EditorThis extra field adds another layer in the richness of Facebook’s targeting.  You can now effectively target students based on their topic of study to more effectively show adverts for further study, or for recruitment purposes for instance.  Furthermore, targeting to college graduates who specified in a certain topic can be used alongside interest targeting to really drill down in a relevant audience for you.

Naturally, this will work better for advertisers in some niches over others, however the value is clear.  The ability to target by job title will most likely be coming soon also, further encroaching into LinkedIn’s market as the place to advertise based on profession.  Targeting at the academic level allows you to go further back into a users history, allowing you to apply a valuable layer of filtering to find your ideal target audience.

A persons field of study is an important part of their development and can indicate a lot about how they have formed their ideas and their view of the world, so being able to target it within Facebook’s advertising system gives yet another advantage when trying to find your ideal fan/customer.

At Datify we constantly find that the more targeted you are, the lower your CPA would be, but also the further back you can go into someone’s thought-funnel in terms of what has made them have the views they have, and what makes them more or less likely to make a purchase decision, allows you to have much more success with your targeting.

This is a small, but well received next step by Facebook in their advertising platform.  We hope for many more options such as job titles, and conversation based targeting in the future!