Facebook Advertising Update: Target People on Their Birthday

In July of this year, Facebook started allowing advertisers to target users on their birthday, a required field for signing up with the service.

Though I have no statistical basis for this claim, I can only imagine that targeting users on their birthday has a dramatic increase in conversion over traditional means. Considering advertisers don’t pay for these highly targeted ad impressions, only clicks, they are set up to drive more business than someone like Google (who doesn’t offer similar targeting).

Because you can hone in on users based on age, there is nothing stopping brands from advertising to almost everyone, for any milestone 16, 21, 30, 40, etc, everyday. Imagine Budweiser wanted to give you something on your birthday 21st? Wouldn’t you accept if it was properly targeted? I predict fortune 500 consumer brands will be vying for the top Facebook spots on your birthday, soon rather than later.

I’ve seen many people migrate their Google Adwords strategy to Facebook, and fail quickly. Google Adwords is mass marketing compared to Facebook advertising. Google knows virtually nothing about the consumer in comparison to Facebook. Where bulk campaigns successfully target all ages, interests, and genders on Google; they rarely have the same success on Facebook.

Facebook ads help you build stronger relationships with your sphere, but they don’t always drive direct sales. If you are looking to motivate your followers to share your brand’s message, you might start with hyper targeted Facebook ads directed at a Fan Page.

We’ve had a difficult time finding live sample ads for this post, naturally (it’s not my birthday). If you screen grab any on your special day, please link them in the comments, I’d love to see them in action.