Just a little something I wanted to share with you. The other day while writing the bi-monthly Facebook status update, something pretty cool/creepy happened. As soon as I posted the update, the suggested pages on the right sidebar updated themselves. Have a look:

I’m not sure if Sponsored Ads work in the same way (I haven’t noticed it if they do), but, this may have a far more subliminal effect than we realise. By suggesting pages about things I have actually written about, I’m far more likely to passively ‘like’ that page – which coincidentally I did, because I bloody love Reggae.

But, by liking these pages, Facebook has further catalogued and categorised me. So, as well as pages I have actively gone to ‘like’ (to show how cool I am to my friends), Facebook is able to keep track of my changing or evolving preferences.

How does this affect us? Well, as many of you conducting Facebook Ad campaigns will know, we will most likely see ads relevant to me as I have been targeted based on the pages I like. By increasing ‘likes’ on pages as in the example above, Facebook is increasingly able to segment its users for advertisers and therefore able to target ads at a far more accurate rate than anyone else in the industry.

Whether this increased level of targeting will increase or decrease price of ads, I’ve yet to work out. On one hand, increased accuracy of targeting could mean greater conversion for us, allowing them to charge more for each ad placement for the privilege. On the other, increasingly niche ad placements are traditionally cheaper due to the potentially smaller audience.

Well, that turned out to be a little more insightful than I originally thought…