Facebook Updates Ad Targeting With Device-Specific Options

Yesterday, Facebook announced an update to ad targeting options that will help refine your efforts to reach people on specific devices by letting you target users based on their device.

As the announcement says:

In order to get high quality installs or engagement within an app, it is very important to reach the right people with the most relevant message. As a result, we are enhancing our mobile targeting for developers.

The update should be rolling out over the next few days. Once it has become fully available, you will be able to deliver ads to people using a specific device and set minimum operating system version. Previously, you could target iOS or Android, minimum OS, and Wi-Fi only users.

With device specific targeting you will have access to App Insights, which you can use to identify which devices are working best for your app and target those devices. This means that if you see a large amount of mobile revenue is coming from the latest iPhone, you can set ads to target only those who have purchased that device. It will also allow you to eliminate users with incompatible devices easily.

With their announcement, Facebook also gave some tips for using mobile device targeting for mobile app ads:

• Don’t go too narrow with your audience: Facebook recommends having an estimated audience size of at least 500,000 users for each ad.
• Customize your ad to resonate with your audience: Facebook recommends using images of the device you’re targeting in your ad.
• Optimize your bid for each campaign: Create different ads with optimized bids for each device or groups of devices as competition may vary by device.
• Layer on complimentary targeting features: Use Custom Audiences and lookalikes to reach a large and relevant set of people.