There’s something important missing in Facebook PPC targeting!

Hi, Facebook.

First.  I love so many of the things you do.  In fact, I wanted to talk to you about one of them today:  Your PPC advertising platform.  Except, instead of gushing about how awesome it is (which I believe), I wanted to offer instead an idea on how to make it much better for marketers, more relevant for users… and of course, more profitable for you!  It’s simple.  Allow me to target people who have recently changed their status in some way.  My clients would be willing to pay much more for this kind of targeting because it would be far more likely to result in sales.  People change their purchasing habits and brand loyalties during significant changes in their lives, and you just happen to know when people are going through such changes.

Here are a few examples of how awesome that would be:

• Imagine how much more valuable it would be to bridal products companies (*cough* TheKnot.com *cough*) if they could target only women who had changed their status to “Engaged” in the last 30 days, or in the last 10 days?  If they’re getting married tomorrow, it’s much less likely they need bridal products, but if I know my clients’ ads will only be seen by women that are just engaged, it’s worth so much more to my client, the user gets sponsored content that is highly relevant to them, I win because my client wins, and you win because we’ll pay you more for it!  Win-win-win-win!
• Along the lines of relationship:  A dating site would be willing to pay big bucks to target only people who had changed their relationship status from a *in-a-relationship* status to a “Single” status 30-90 days ago (because less than 30 days is too soon … … or is it?).
• Local advertisers would be willing to pay far more to advertise to people who had just moved to their area because it’s easy pickings until new inhabitants build brand loyalties in a particular area.
• Sports equipment retailers would pay more to advertise to people who recently added an interest in a particular sport because those people would be more likely to need to gear up!  You know, the serial sports enthusiasts who like tennis this year, buy all the best equipment, and then join an ice hockey league next year and do it all over again.  They’re decidedly not very good at any one sport, but they sure do buy a lot of gear!  Let my clients target them!

I could go on, dear Facebook… but I don’t want to excite you any more than I have already.  It wouldn’t be good for our professional relationship.  You see, I feel like I know you pretty well.  I know you need/want to be more profitable.  And I hope you want to constantly serve your users and your advertisers better.  With this idea, you can do all three through the three R’s:  Riches (for you), Relevance (for your users), and ROI (for your advertisers).  I also know you appreciate alliteration.  And good sense.  And I just gave you both.  Oh yeah!

With Lots of Love,

Kurt Theobald, Fearless Leader of the Classy Llama Herd

<END OPEN LETTER>

Llama Plug:  NEED FACEBOOK PPC HELP?  Contact Classy Llama to discuss your objectives.  (Obviously, if we’re giving advice to Facebook, we’ve gotta be pretty good at it, right?  Right.)