Facebook ecommerce platform Payvment announced a new one-click Facebook ad buying service today, which essentially gives merchants a way to turn promotional Facebook posts into ads.
The service automatically targets ads based on historical social shopping data. The company says it boosts clickthroughs by as much as 25% (compared to standard Facebook ads). Payvment’s algorithm predicts which audience segments are most likely to be interested in a seller’s products based on over two years of social shopping data, the company says.
“Targeting Facebook Ads can be a bit of a guessing game – it’s hard for sellers to know exactly which audiences will respond to their products,” says CEO Christian Taylor. “Since Payvment powers a majority of the shopping on Facebook, we see patterns that we use to create very effective targeting. No one else can do this.”
Taylor told us last month that Pavyment has been signing on 1,500 new brands each week, with about 160,000 brands using the platform. Today, the company says it’s customer base is at 165,000. Here’s our full interview with him:
“The small and medium businesses that use Payvment have historically looked at Facebook Ads as out of reach for their business,” says Taylor. “Either they’re not clear on how they work, or they don’t want to spend money learning as they go.”
And that’s where he hopes his product can come in.
The company cites a recent survey of its own customer base, finding that over 60% of them have yet to try Facebook Ads, with 25% saying they haven’t tried them because they don’t understand how to use them. Two thirds of those who had bought Facebook ads said they weren’t satisfied, and cited low click-through rates or poor targeting.
Payvment’s new product is simply integrated into its existing promotion tool, so perhaps customers already comfortable with Payvment will be comfortable with this option.
Meanwhile, it seems that some are finding better results with Facebook ads (in the form of sponsored stories) on the mobile side of the equation.