Source (Facebook for Business): http://on.fb.me/193nNam

Since December, 2013, Facebook Ads has allowed marketers and business owners the incredibly powerful ability to target your businesses custom target audience by using third- party Purchasing Behavioral data and Buyer Profiles from data mining companies, such as Datalogix, Axciom and Epsilon. Whereas, prior to December, 2013, businesses and marketers using Facebook Ads could only obtain this offline consumer purchasing behavior by having individual service contracts with the above mentioned data mining companies. In what follows I will explain how businesses can easily start using FB Ads Purchasing Behaviors and Buyer Profiles to better research, test, define and generate leads via Facebook Ads, related to their target audience’s offline purchasing habits.

How to Set up Custom Audience Purchasing Behaviors in Facebook Ads

Facebook Ads Purchasing Behaviors can simply be found within the Facebook Ads Manager or Power Editor by going to create an ad, and then from the audiences section go to the Behaviors area and select the “Browse” drop-down menu, where you can select the type of consumer purchasing behaviors, which you would like to target based on your intended target audience.

Source: https://facebook.com/ads/create

Some of the FB Ads purchase behavior targeting categories include:

• Business Purchases
• Buyer Profiles
• Clothing
• Food and Drink
• Health and Beauty
• Home and Garden
• Household Products
• Kids Products
• Pet Products
• Sports and Outdoors, etc.

Buyer Profiles

In addition to targeting specific offline consumer market segments related to the product and/or service that you want to advertise on Facebook, you can also select Buyer Profiles within the FB Ads Purchase Behavior drop-down menu, which have been carefully created and researched by Facebook’s third-party data mining partner companies, such as Epsilon and Datalogix. And all of the offline consumer financial transactional and customer loyalty card data that third-party data mining companies provide for Facebook Ads’ custom audience targeting features is protected by hashing (encrypting) the information so that their personal financial information and identities are safely protected online. Some of the custom Facebook Ads Buyer Profiles include:

Source: http://www.jonloomer.com/2014/05/28/facebook-ads-targeting-purchases/

Of course you can also get more specific with your Buyer Profile and Purchasing Behavioral targeting by clicking on the + sign next to the sub-categories within the Buyer Profiles and other purchasing behavior sub-categories (as shown below).

Source: http://www.jonloomer.com/2014/05/28/facebook-ads-targeting-purchases/

Business Purchases

If you are a B2B company you will likely want to check out the Business Purchases sub-category within the FB Ads Behavior targeting drop-down menu, which include the following categories:

• Business Marketing
• Maintenance Repair and Operations
• Training and Publications
• Office and Corporate Gifts

In particular if you’re ideal target audience customers for your business purchase any of these products or services, you will definitely want to check out these Business Purchase categories. For instance, if you are in the business of selling and marketing Facebook training courses and e-Books, such as Jon Loomer or Mari Smith, then you will definitely want to consider checking out the Business Marketing, and Training and Publication sub-categories in Facebook Ads. Moreover, as Facebook states: all of the data for the Business Purchase Behavior sub-categories is “aggregated offline, multi-sourced, consumer-level transaction data” from third party data mining company Epsilon.

Purchase Habits and Purchase Types

The new Facebook Ads custom audience behavioral targeting features also allow advertisers to target consumers’ offline purchase habits, including: whether you are an above average spender; spend most of your time shopping online, or spend money offline at retail outlets. In addition Facebook Ads’ new behavioral targeting features include the following specific offline product purchase type categories:

• Appliances
• Arts and Crafts
• Beauty Accessories
• Books
• Collectibles
• Women’s Apparel
• Tools and Electronics
• Software
• Gender Neutral Apparel
• Gift Products
• Gifts and Flowers
• Gifts and Party Supplies
• High-End Home Décor
• Home Office
• Low-End Home Décor
• Men’s Apparel
• Music and Videos
• Senior Products
• Shoes
• Small and Home Office Products
• Specialty Foods and Gifts
• Sports and Outdoors
• Tools and Electronics
• Travel Supplies
• Upscale Travel and Services

Store Types and Subscriptions

In addition, the new Facebook Ads custom audience behavioral targeting features within the Facebook Ads Manager and Power Editor include, targeting your ads towards customers who buy from certain types of stores, such as high end retailers V.S. lower end box stores, which can be extremely helpful for businesses advertising their products on Facebook if they are trying to significantly boost their online retail sales through a sales event promotion during a short period of time or just in terms of testing out the interest of a new products popularity via Facebook Ads Store Types and other custom audience behavioral targeting features, such as purchase types.

Last but not least, businesses owners can use the new Facebook Ads behavioral targeting features to advertise their subscriptions services to your custom tailored target market audience, including: consumers who purchase auto insurance and mortgages online, prepaid debit cards, satellite T.V. subscribers and those who purchase higher education.

Source: http://www.jonloomer.com/2014/05/28/facebook-ads-targeting-purchases/

Summary

Facebook Ads’ recently added offline behavioral purchasing targeting features are definitely a force to be reckoned with in the highly competitive online digital advertising world, since they now allow any business or individual who wants to advertise their products or services on Facebook to target their ads based on third party data mining companies’ (i.e. Datalogix, Epsilon and Axciom) consumer-level financial transaction data, which is sourced partly from loyalty card companies and other consumer-level financial transaction data that they have direct access to. Thus, this third party, offline aggregated, multi-sourced, transaction-level financial and consumer behavioral data is highly helpful in providing highly relevant marketing data regarding Facebook advertisers’ target audiences offline buying habits; as well as providing endless behavioral targeting categories, such as Buyer Profiles, Product Types, Store Types, and Purchase Habits. In essence the new Facebooks Ads behavioral targeting features takes a lot of the tedious internet advertising market research out of the equation for businesses and marketers who advertise on Facebook, so that they can spend more time focusing on the things that matter most for their business, such as their customer’s needs and product development.