Before we begin, here are a few facts about Facebook:

• More than 400 million active users

• 50% of active users log on to Facebook in any given day

• Average user has 130 friends

• People spend over 500 billion minutes per month on Facebook

• There are over 160 million objects that people interact with (pages, groups and events)

• Average user is connected to 60 pages, groups and events

• Average user creates 70 pieces of content each month

• More than 25 billion pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photo albums, etc.) shared each month.

• Women age 55 and up are the fastest growing demographic on Facebook.

[Source: Facebook]

Wow. That’s what I think when I read those statistics. Facebook is the perfect new medium to add to a media buyer’s repertoire. It allows the advertiser to narrow down its target audience geographically, by gender, age and even interest.

What does this mean to the advertiser? It eliminates uncertainty with regard to your advertising dollars by allowing you total control of who and where your message is being received and for what time frame. You set the parameters, you set the run dates, you even set the daily budget you would like to spend and decide if you want that budget to be determined by impressions or click-throughs.

Facebook provides you with a detailed reporting of how your ads are progressing, which means you can keep track of your success. It also allows you to change your parameters during your run if you notice that you are not receiving as many impressions or click-throughs as you would deem appropriate. How does this happen?

Here are some of the things you need to be aware of — if you narrow the field down too small with likes and dislikes in your selection of your target audience, you could end up with too small of an audience. Fortunately, Facebook gives you the estimated reach on the right side of the screen as they relate to your selections. So you can know upfront how large your target audience is before beginning your campaign. Be aware of this in order to be more successful in your marketing efforts.

There are many advantages to advertising with Facebook, but the one downfall I have encountered is that the ad layouts are all identical without the option to place a creative ad that corresponds with a business’ other marketing efforts. There are no options; it is a 25-character headline, a small photo and then a 135-character body copy. Hopefully, Facebook will address this issue soon and then the marketing option of Facebook will be limitless.