Facebook Allows Advertisers to Target by OS, Device

If your business makes trendy iPad covers, it would make sense that you spend most of your advertising dollars on customers with iPads, right? Or maybe market research has shown that your restaurant i...
Facebook Allows Advertisers to Target by OS, Device
Written by Josh Wolford
  • If your business makes trendy iPad covers, it would make sense that you spend most of your advertising dollars on customers with iPads, right? Or maybe market research has shown that your restaurant is really popular with Android users, but not iPhone users. In these scenarios, you need specific ad targeting on mobile devices. Luckily for you, Facebook has quietly rolled this out in the past couple of weeks.

    According to TechCrunch, the new targeting options first appeared as part of Facebook’s final launch of their mobile app install ads to all developers. These ads allow app devs to promote their apps to more users within their news feeds. Apparently, Facebook realized that developers needed to be able to target specific mobile OS with their advertising (no use targeting iPhone users if you made an Android app).

    So the company introduced these new OS and device targeting options. And although they seem to be originally slated for app developer use, other types of marketers can definitely take advantage of the new categories.

    As of right now, the new placement options for mobile ads include iOS or Android – and iOS is broken down into the iPhone, iPad, and iPod. TechCrunch notes that these options are similar to “broad category” targeting already available to advertisers, but differ because they allow advertisers to get specific on exactly where their ads manifest.

    More specific advertising for mobile ad customers – not the first step in this direction and definitely not the last, especially from a company that is trying to court these types of advertisers at every turn. What do you think? Could this type of device targeting make a difference in the success of your ads?

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