Let’s face it—Facebook ads are useful for reaching customers up to a point.

Earlier this year, Facebook announced that search ad placements are available for all advertisers. This comes as good news for us, especially when it comes to targeting customers. Due to their previous experiments on the Marketplace and Sponsored News Feed ads, Facebook saw potential in searchable ads and decided to allow users to freely find it on their platform. However, it is currently available for mobile versions only and news regarding other devices have yet to emphasized. Though Facebook had had their ups and downs with advertisements, this updated feature is certainly a big boon for marketing.

In line with that, Facebook released updates regarding brand safety controls. This came as a result of Youtube’s ad-pocalypse a few years ago. Thus, Facebook allows businesses to control where their ads are placed and makes sure that their Facebook ads are not associated with accounts that harbor explicit, harmful content.

What It Does

Source | TrackMaven

Whatever your audience is, customer marketing funnel applies. But what search ad placement does it better by tapping customers with a buying mindset on the shoulder. The common goal of creating Facebook ads is often to capture attention. Nowadays, it’s quite difficult to do that due to market resistance, saturation, and feature fatigue. We often inject humor or shock to try and stand out, but likes and reactions aren’t enough. High number of likes and views don’t necessarily mean conversion.

Back to the marketing funnel, if it’s already difficult to capture attention, it’s more difficult to filter customers down a level. The end goal would always be conversion and engagement. Search ad placements change that system. Now your ads can rather focus on something else than just pure shock and attention. If you check the funnel above, as you go down the funnel, the action differentiates. Customers with a buying mindset are looking for something more specific. They need more engagement and persuasion. And your business can deal with other cards when it comes to that.

The layout would be similar to the News Feed and Marketplace layout. The tag Sponsored would still appear for customers to discern that they are looking for ads. New Facebook ads will be notified if your ads are eligible for placement. If you wish to include your ads for search placement, just click the “Automatic Placements” option, and it will appear as stated.

Facebook Ads and Brand Safety Controls

On November 20, Facebook updated advertisers’ control when it comes to search ad placements. Their goal is to create a safe and welcoming community for ads and maintain high-quality content on Facebook. All advertisements, even yours, should follow their Community Standards as their recent statistics (along with Instagram) showed very harmful content. An Ads Manager tab will be available so you can create blocklists and inventory filters.

Here’s a complete list of Brand Safety Controls from their page:

• Controls over where their ad appears when shown within publisher or creator content
• The publisher lists so advertisers know where their ads might appear before they run
• Publisher delivery reports so they can understand where their ads ran
• Blocklists to prevent an advertiser’s ads from delivering on specific publishers
• Inventory filter so they can choose the type of content they want to be associated with their business and filter out the rest
• Partnerships with third parties to provide advertisers with even more options

A Different Kind of Advertisement

Facebook ads are effective, but undoubtedly the competition is high and often results in saturation. That’s why most of us work hard when it comes to creating great content. However, now that Facebook gave us more control with our advertisements, this means we can do more than what we previously could even though the same principles apply.

The search ad placement feature also emphasizes that the market has an active set of audience. And there is a different kind of persuasion required here. But all in all, Facebook has become more digital marketing friendly and has proven that our industry is more dynamic than ever.