Gender

Facebook’s Gender Targeting Options

Facebook collects a great deal of demographic information from all of its users, but only two details are required of everybody who signs up for the social network: birthday and gender. This means that advertisers can divide Facebook’s user base by gender, exactly.

With Facebook Ads, marketers don’t need to use proxies like “search term” or “interest” to determine gender. Every user states it explicitly.

Targeting for Gender-Specific Offerings

The most common form of gender targeting is for gender-specific offers. If you are selling men’s pants or women’s dresses; barbershops for men or salons for women; the Boys Scouts or the Brownies, you’ll want your ads to appear to males or females accordingly. When you create your ads, simply set your gender target accordingly: “Male,” “Female,” or, for gender-neutral offer, “All.”

Gender-Specific Ad Creatives

Even if your offer is gender neutral, you may want to create gender-specific versions of your ads with different messages. Marketers know that the same product is often sold differently to men and women. If this could be the case with your offer, create separate versions of your ads – one targeted to men, the other to women – and test different ad creatives on each.

There are five key takeaways to help your Facebook ad targeting strategy:

1. Create very finely-targeted ad segments. Separate men and women. Segment by age and other demographic selects, too. Smaller, highly-targeted ad segments enable more relevant and cost effective Facebook advertising.
2. Methodically expand the number of highly-targeted ad segments to effectively scale campaigns by extending this improved relevance and performance to larger audiences.
3. Use custom text and images for targeting men vs. women. Different messages will get the attention of different genders.
4. Adjust bidding strategies based on segment attributes, including gender. Don’t overspend trying to reach males given the glut of inventory and lower rates available for targeting men.
5. Monitor Frequency–an ad Frequency of six is optimal. Beyond that point, people tune out and fresh creative is required to drive engagement.