Facebook adds profession-based ad targeting

Facebook continues to tighten up its ad targeting offering and now advertisers can target users by their profession.

by Helen Leggatt

Advertisers seeking to market direct to a specific profession can now do so via Facebook’s advertising platform. Several aspects of the platform have been tightened up in past weeks and profession-based targeting is the most recent.

Previously, only keywords used in a member’s “interest” field were indexed, but now profession has been added allowing for tighter targeting of SocialAds.

Nick O’Neill at AllFacebook blogged about this recent Facebook update after a tip-off from Rob Webb. Apart from that, the update appears to have received very little attention, and nothing yet appears on the official Facebook blog. However, O’Neill does provide a screenshot to demonstrate the new function.

MySpace has also been tweaking its ad offerings, the most recent change being the addition of a new splash page. "The new splash page features a larger creative palette for advertisers, allowing for a flexible platform to put a large percentage of the page into a brand," writes Jennifer LeClaire at CRM Daily.