Podcast Description

Have you been scrolling through Facebook and thought to yourself, “Is this an ad, why am I seeing this?”

Well, in this episode, Manuel will share with you how Facebook and Instagram are helping advertisers and businesses put their ads right in front of you.

And once you understand how they do it you can start using the very same knowledge to promote your own brand and business.

It can even be fun, once you know how to do it the right way.

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The Secret to Why You’re Seeing That Ad on Facebook

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Podcast Transcription

Teaser: I want to understand why that ad is being put in my feed when I’m seeing all the time, my friends and family. Why is Contentful earning a spot on that particular feed?

Intro: Welcome to the Facebook Marketing Ninja podcast. My name is Jimmy and I’m the Associate Creative Director for Manuel Suarez here at AGM.

Before we jump into today’s episode, Manuel asked me to invite you to check out the AGM Ninja Lab.

Inside, you’ll find everything you need to successfully navigate the digital marketing world from social media basics, content creation tips, and even advanced automated bot building.

Also, that you can discover even more profitability in your business in 2021.

And right now you can test drive the AGM Ninja Lab for a full seven days for just $1. Go to agmninjalab.com to get started today.

That’s A-G-M-N-I-N-J-A-L-A-B.com. Hop over there and fire up your $1 seven-day test drive today.

Now, here’s a question. Have you been scrolling through Facebook and thought to yourself, is this an ad? Why am I seeing this? Well, in this episode, Manuel will share with you how Facebook and Instagram are helping advertisers and businesses put their ads right in front of you.

And once you understand how they do it, you can start using the very same knowledge to promote your brand and business. It can even be fun once you know how to do it the right way. Enjoy.

Sponsored Ads – Why Am I Seeing This?

Okay. So if you go to facebook.com on your desktop or on the app, you’re going to be able to see exactly what I am going to show you guys right now.

Historically, the way that marketing has worked on Facebook is that they have captured attention by putting things in front of you, of people that you follow and brands that you follow.

For example, that’s Wrap Your Baby. It’s a student of mine that she posts great content out there in social media. She’s live on Facebook right now. I can see her there and you can see the comments and everything.

And then you have content like this. This right here is an actual ad.

Now, how do you know if it’s an ad?

Well, if I zoom in on it a little bit over here, you’re going to see that there’s something that… Right under the name of the page. This right here, it’s the name of the Facebook page.

This right here is a sponsored ad, which means that that company, Contentful is investing on some advertising dollars for the right to be placed in my newsfeed.

That’s what they’re doing. They’re putting a little piece of their brand inside the brand, inside the business, inside the actual page, so I can actually see their brand and what they have going on.

So, one thing that I’m going to show you here is – why am I seeing this ad? And also I’m going to show you why you also are seeing your ad. So you can discover that along the way.

This is something that has been around for quite a while. As you know, Facebook has pushed for something called transparency.

They want to make sure they give you data as a user, as much data as possible. Because if you’re unhappy with Facebook as a user, you might leave the platform, right? Maybe you already left.

If you are happy with the way they handle their company and the way they handle the data that you give them, then you can stay around in their company. If they lose you, they lose money. Because sometimes what people don’t understand is that you are not the customer. You are the asset as a user.

Now, if you are like me and you’re an advertiser and you’re a brand and you’re really into making money with social media, then you are Facebook’s customer. But if not, you’re just an asset.

Right here, I am being shown this because I’m an asset to Facebook. So what I want to do is I want to find out why is Contentful putting that ad in front of me.

Well, the way that you discover that is that you go over here and on your mobile app or on the desktop, there’s going to be three dots right here, these three dots.

You’re going to click on those dots and let’s see what options show up over here.

Once I click on this, it’s going to open up this window and I have several options.

• Hide the add
• Report the ad
• Save link
• Turn on the notifications of this post; or
• Why am I seeing this ad?

Why am I seeing it?

I want to understand why that ad is being put in my feed when I’m seeing all the time, my friends and family. Why is Contentful earning a spot on that particular feed? Well, let’s click on it.

I click on this thing right here and it says ‘Why are you seeing this ad?‘.

You’re seeing this ad because your information matches Contentful’s advertising request. That’s pretty clear. Contentful is trying to reach people who speak English, UK, and English, US.

I speak English. That makes sense.

Contentful is trying to reach people ages 24 to 60.

Well, this case, this is an actual arbitrary point for every single brand. You as a brand owner, you as the one doing the advertiser or the marketer, you have the ability to select whatever you want here.

I can say that I want to target people that are 21 years of age. No less, no more than that.

I can say that I want to target people that are all the way to 65 and over. I can say that I want to target people that are 35 to 54 years old. That data is something that I can use in my own campaigns the way that I want to, because Facebook has that data.

Contentful is also trying to reach people whose primary location is in the United States. So that also makes sense.

So what is Contentful doing over here? They’re going after people that are ages 24 and 60, in the United States, and they speak English.

This is their targeting right now and you can decide to hide that – the advertiser, or you can just leave it like that, or you can change your ad preferences.

Something to keep in mind here is that –

If you’re trying to understand how to find your potential prospects, your customers, your potential audiences interested in your message, I would actually do everything that I can to understand how brands and companies market to me.

Because the more that I understand that, the better I can be in the art and science of capturing not only the attention, the RIGHT ATTENTION.

So let’s go and find another example over here. I’m going to go down in newsfeed. I’m going to see a friend of mine here, a friend, engagement, some questions about a group, a staff member of mine, posting something there, another friend, and let’s keep going.

Oh, look at that. We got another ad over here. Interesting. You should know this.

If you’re watching this video, you already know that I’m a marketer. I do marketing for a living. I have a marketing agency called AGM, Attention Grabbing Media. We have 80 staff and all we do is – we specialize on capturing attention in these platforms.

Notice how interesting it is that when an ad gets put in front of me, I only see also similar things like that. Marketing, software for marketing, marketing teaching, marketing education, marketing products.

Facebook knows what I like and I don’t like!

They know that if they put here an ad of makeup, I’m not going to be into it and I’m going to lose attention on Facebook. Because of that, Facebook does something called personalized ads based on what I like, based on my traffic on social media and outside social media, they give me more of that.

The Facebook User Experience

It’s all based on something that they call ‘UE’ User Experience, UX. That user experience is going to be what determines whether you stay on the platform or not.

So let’s look at this one over here. The CEO of HYROS, Alex Becker. He says, let’s keep the fluff. If iOS hurts you, tracking HYROS can fix it today. Here’s how!

He’s talking about the situation that’s happening right now with iOS, making some changes. There’s another video about that subject. Maybe my guys can link it over here or link it over there. We did talk about the subject of iOS quite a bit, and we will continue about that. I’m talking about that later on.

I want to know what data of mine is the CEO of HYROS, Alex Becker using to put that ad right there.

Well, I’m going to do this. Again, three dots. I’m going to click over here and I’m going to find out why am I seeing this ad? Let’s see… Over here again, why am I seeing this ad?

And it says, you’re seeing this ad because YOUR INFORMATION MATCHES CEO of HYROS, Alex Becker’s advertising requests.

Okay. I got that. There could also be more factors not listed here. Learn more. So let’s see what they say. Hmm. Interesting. Check this out!

The CEO of HYROS, Alex Becker wants to reach people who may be SIMILAR to their customers.

Wow, wait a second. So does that mean that I can actually take my customer list of my best customers and feed it to Facebook on Facebook’s business manager, with phone numbers and emails and names of that customer and give it to Facebook. And Facebook is going to help me find customers like mine? People that are similar to me? To these customers?

Exactly right. Facebook can actually do that for you. And they have a process called…

Hashing Customer Information

I probably have a video for that, too. They have a process called HASHING in which when I give Facebook a file of phone numbers and emails and identities, they actually help me match that with a person on the other side using social media themselves on Facebook and Instagram, which happened to be owned by the same company.

So you can actually use your data, your customer list – like HYROS is using over here – to help you find more people like your best customers.

That is actually possible with social media marketing. And one of the greatest secrets that a lot of people don’t even know are possible with these platforms.

CEO of HYROS, Alex Becker is trying to reach people who speak English, UK, and English, US, and CEO of HYROS Alex Becker is trying to reach people ages 24 to 55.

Let’s see what happens if we go over here and we click on this thing that says, Learn More. I’m going to click on this. And over here, go to learn more, opens up a new page.

And it explains, ‘We want the ads you see on Facebook to be personalized to your interests and to introduce you to new things. Here are some ways we show you ads that we think may be interesting to you. Your activity across the Facebook products, your activity with other businesses, location information, ways to review and manage your information and so on.‘

So you can see here that Facebook is using the data that you have given them access to, for example, your activity on the Facebook family of apps, and also other websites that have not – the people have not opted out from tracking to be able to serve you more ads that are going to help you make better decisions and take care of things better.

If you think about it, I don’t think there’s something worse on social media than the death of personalized ads.

If Facebook has to serve ads regardless, why would I actually want to see ads of things that I don’t care about instead of actually seeing ads of marketing, of software, of things that are gonna help me get more of what I want? All right.

What are Personalized Ads?

So there you have it. Personalized ads. You can find out exactly how they’re being personalized by simply going through your newsfeed and clicking on those ‘Why am I seeing ads?’ on every single sponsored ad that you see.

The more that you do this, the more you are going to understand how people and brands are targeting you. And the more that you’re going to understand how social media marketing works in this new environment of social media marketing.

I will see you guys in the next one. If you have any questions about marketing, remember you can text me at any time. I’m the one answering my text messages (813) 212-2196.

If you’re interested in being a part of my program and learning next-level marketing strategies, you can always join the program at agmninjalab.com to find out more about how we can help you take your marketing game to the next level. And I will see you in the next episode.

Hey guys, it’s Jimmy again. I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Facebook Marketing Ninja podcast.

If you want to learn more advanced Ninja tactics to grow your business and master social media marketing, then sign up for the Manuel Suarez coaching program by heading over to our website, www.agmninjalab.com. That’s www.agmninjalab.com.