Facebook began rolling out a new feature to its search engine in late October 2019 – Search placements. Meaning that your Facebook ad can now show up in results from the search box. This development caters to advertisers by making the search box tailored to reach customers.
What are Facebook search ads?
Facebook search ads are a new form of advertising allowed on their platform. This previously tested feature is set to change campaign management of Facebook ads, and provide a new place to advertise. This could be music to the ears of marketers, all members of an ad agency, and internet-based businesses. The advertisements that normally show up on the sidebars and in the news feed, will also be added to search bar results.
This option was originally tested in 2013, to find new ways to allow marketers to reach clients as ad space became scarce. The idea was to allow businesses to show up in the search and to allow companies to add this feature as an automatic placements option. Facebook released a statement in regards to the new release. The social media giant stated that:
“Ad campaigns using Automatic Placements will automatically include the Facebook Search Results placement. You can also manually select the placement when setting up your campaign. Once you decide to opt-in, ads will be eligible to appear on search result pages which include general search and Marketplace search – and will both respect the audience targeting of the campaign and be contextually relevant to a limited set of English and Spanish search terms.”
Why is this important?
This new feature can help in a variety of ways. Facebook is running out of space and there are few “new” options for advertisers to promote content. This feature allows specific searches to yield desired results, with the new inclusion of ads. Imagine being able to market directly to customers that are searching for what you have to offer within Facebook. This gives customers the ability to get results and direct solutions to what they are searching for.
Benefits of Search Ads
This may be a temporary solution to an over-populated space for advertisements, but search ads give advertisers a place to promote their products and services in a location within Facebook that has untapped potential. Advertising has become a challenge over the last few years due to limitations of space. It is now more important to ad agencies where their ads show up.
Customers will benefit (in a way) from this new feature. If a random user searches the term “ways to lose weight,” what they can expect to find is a myriad of solutions to their problem. Now, some of those results will be ads geared toward helping this user find a solution to their problem. By providing information that will make purchases about weight loss easier, that limits users’ need to navigate elsewhere.
Benefits for Agencies
Ad agencies will benefit most from this new feature as mentioned earlier to be able to better target client’s searches and develop new ways to reach clients through search ads. This will allow better campaigns that can have the potential to gain higher lead generations and hopefully turn into more conversions.
Make the most of this new opportunity to be able to optimize the use of Facebook ads. Advertisers can now connect directly to an already “warm” customer that is looking for a specific thing (this concept isn’t new, its the concept that Google Search ads was founded on). A user cannot actively choose what ads he or she sees in the newsfeed, however, an ad shows up in the search box because it is something they are actively interested in. Hopefully, this new element can provide new information based on the way customers find information.
Alternatively, if this is a feature that you don’t want to utilize, simply select Edit Placements, and deselect the search results feature.
Conclusion
Facebook does not want to neglect the needs of the user, and many of those users have complained about the number of ads on the platform. Hopefully, this new feature will prove to be a solution to both advertisers and users alike. Though the majority of Facebook’s revenue comes from ads, sometimes they detract from the user experience. Search ads are one way to lessen the number of advertisements seen in the newsfeed while promoting products and services to warm audiences. A win-win? We’ll find out.
