Facebook announced that it is giving advertisers a new feature that allows them to target people based on the network connection they most often use when accessing Facebook. Options are: 2G, 3G, or 4G.

The idea is that this will help businesses better reach users in developing countries with more varied connections, so simpler ads can be targeted to lesser connections, making for an all around less annoying experience.

“Facebook already offers the option to reach people based on the type of device they use (smart phones, feature phones and tablets), as well as device model and operating system,” the company said in a blog post. “However, advertisers also told us that having the ability to segment based on network connection type would help them create better ad experiences.”

“Targeting by mobile network type helps advertisers choose creative that will run smoothly on any given device and connection speed,” it added. “For example, serving a video ad to people in Indonesia with 2G connections may mean wasted impressions if people are unable to load the video or it buffers for minutes when clicked. 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.”

The company also suggests that advertisers will be able to create more compelling localized campaigns using the feature. Vodafone has already been doing this with good early results, it says.

Bandwidth targeting is immediately available to advertisers around the world with the Ad Create Tool, Power Editor, and the API.

Facebook revealed in its most recent earnings report that it had 654 million mobile daily active users on average during the second quarter, up 39% from the same period last year. It had 1.07 billion mobile monthly active users.

Image via Facebook