Without much fanfare, Facebook has quietly introduced a new ad targeting option—detailed targeting—which combines demographics, interests, behaviors and categories. Marketers can now create extremely sophisticated, multi-layered target groups that will give them the ultimate in targeting precision.

In essence, Facebook is bringing four different targeting options—Demographics, Behaviors, Interests and Categories—into one place. With these different targeting options, marketers can build composite targets, such as reaching parents, working in the banking industry, celebrating their wedding anniversary in the next month, for example.This will produce better results, and of course, more money spent on Facebook. It’s a win-win for everyone. It will also be especially helpful to beginner advertisers.

Now, advertisers on Facebook will see all the targeting options in one place, without needing to explore multiple drop-downs. By making audience targeting more precise, marketers can make their ads significantly more attractive and effective.

More precision means a smaller audience and more competition. If there are too many advertisers competing for the same niche audience, we may see greatly increased CPM and average cost per click for that audience.

OR vs. AND Targeting

For those using third-party tools that work with the Facebook API, you’ve probably already witnessed the power of AND targeting.

Up until now, Facebook has been operating with OR targeting. This means that if you attempt to get your message in front of two audiences, you would hit either of them, and not the intersection of the two audiences.

An example of this would be if you wanted to reach people interested in Soccer and Rugby in the same campaign. Facebook would show your ad to either Soccer fans OR Rugby fans. Now with AND targeting, you can reach people interested in both sports.

You may notice that some targeting options appear to have been removed from the general Facebook ad options page—Demographics (Relationship, Education, Work, Life Events, and more) and Behaviors.

These options can now be found in the “Detailed Targeting” section, which actually makes sense, because these were already partially using AND targeting when combined with Interests and other targeting factors.

How Can You Get Access to Detailed Targeting?

According to Facebook, these new targeting options are slowly being rolled out to advertisers. If you have an account manager at Facebook, ask if these new options can be enabled for you.

The new detailed targeting options are going to make advertising on Facebook a lot easier. If you can get your message in front of the ideal audience, you have a better chance of converting. This will make advertisers happier than targeting messages at those that might only be slightly interested, and are not likely to convert. Hopefully, this should decrease CPM for narrowly targeted audiences, but only time will tell.