Facebook announced a new ad product for local businesses called Local Awareness ads. These let businesses find new customers by showing ads to groups of people who are near that business’s neighborhood.

“Local awareness ads are built to be more cost-effective than traditional advertising channels like newspaper while offering more precise targeting and greater reach,” the company explains. “We think they’re the best way for local businesses to reach people near them, and the best way for people who use Facebook to discover more useful things in their area.”

“After creating an ad, a Page owner can simply enter their business’s address and the radius around which they’d like to reach, and Facebook will use that information in order to create an audience comprised of people who live in that area, or were recently near the business,” a spokesperson for Facebook explains in an email. “For more precise targeting, marketers can also choose the age and gender of their audience. And with convenient call-to-action options such as ‘Get Directions’ or ‘Like Page,’ business owners are able to easily prompt ad engagement.

Local Awareness ads will begin rolling out via the Ads Create tool and API over the coming weeks. They’ll only be available in the U.S. at first, but Facebook says a global launch will come within months.

Image via Facebook