Facebook Adds User-Targeting Based on Mobile Connection Speed

Facebook already provides marketers with the ability to target mobile users in a variety of ways, including by device type, model and operating system. Now, the social media giant is further expanding mobile targeting to allow advertisers to tailor ads based on the speed of a user’s connection, whether that is 2G, 3G or 4G.

The new targeting feature is primarily aimed at high-growth countries such as India, where many people access the Internet via mobile devices but have a wide variance in connection speeds.

“People in high-growth countries around the world are coming online at a staggering rate, and a majority are accessing the Internet via mobile networks,” explained Facebook in its blog post announcing the latest targeting development. “In these countries, a mobile phone is much more than a way to place calls and send messages. It’s often a true lifeline, providing information about prices at markets, health care, banking, employment, entertainment and everything in between.”

The lack of consistency in user connection speeds can be problematic for advertisers. For example, creating a video ad that is targeted to users in a country like Indonesia, where many people have only 2G connections, won’t work well as loading the video would be too slow. With the addition of user-speed targeting, advertisers will be able to deliver ads that are more likely to be effective in reaching people with different Internet connection speeds.

“Optimizing the creative – for instance, targeting a video campaign to people with high-speed connections, and swapping in an image or link ad for people with slower connections – means ads can perform more efficiently for the people seeing them,” wrote Brendan Sullivan, a Facebook product marketing manager.

Facebook states that advertisers such as Vodafone in India are seeing positive results in initial tests of the new bandwidth-targeting functionality. “We are excited about the new mobile targeting option on Facebook which allows us sharper targeting to a relevant audience,” said Ronita Mitra, Senior Vice President, Brand Communication, Insights and Online, Vodafone India. “We hope to see more such technology innovations across the industry.”

Targeting users based on their connection speed is now available to advertisers worldwide through Facebook’s Ad Create and Power Editor tools, as well as its API. “As with all targeting options we offer, this feature was built with privacy in mind,” Facebook explained in its blog post. “All data is anonymous; audiences for mobile network targeting are developed by aggregating groups of people based on primary connection-type. People want fast, efficient experiences on their phones. Our hope is that mobile network targeting can improve the experience people have with Facebook ads by helping advertisers deliver the right experience while respecting people’s device bandwidth and data costs.”