Last week Facebook released broad audiences for Dynamic Ads to all advertisers globally on Facebook, Instagram and Audience Network. This is a huge move for Facebook toward a full-funnel approach that presents a major opportunity for travel advertisers to reach new customers with city-specific intent. We’re extremely excited to see this product rolled out for hotel advertisers on Dynamic Ads for Travel, as our clients have been involved in testing this feature since the pre-alpha stage through beta.
What are Broad Audiences & How Do They Work?
Broad audiences (also known as prospecting) is an audience targeting setting that allows advertisers to reach customers who are in-market for travel with a specific destination in mind but have not visited that advertiser’s site.
For example, let’s say a business consultant, Doug, is searching for a hotel in Phoenix for an upcoming business trip. He searches across multiple websites and search engines to compare prices, reviews and amenities. His search activity and demographic information may make him an ideal candidate for receiving ads for a particular hotel in Phoenix, even if he didn’t visit the website for that specific hotel. Broad audiences allow Facebook advertisers to reach consumers with travel intent like Doug.
To define how users are collected in broad audiences, Facebook states that it “combines what it knows about people’s browsing activity (on and off Facebook), their demographic characteristics, and products in retailers’ catalogs, to deliver ads with personalized product recommendations.” This new targeting specification provides extreme value for travel advertisers as it allows new customers to interact with the brand and drive them down the booking funnel.
