by David MullingsI have spoken about brands using social networking sites before but this post seeks to show exactly how Facebook can be used for targeted advertising (and why it could very well be worth so much money).Facebook has had a feature called Facebook Flyers where advertisers could place ads and pay for impressions received. They recently created a Pro version that allows advertising more like Google, pay per click.Presently I can only access the flyers application by clicking a link below a flyer that appears on my page but I believe that full access is what Facebook will unveil with their new advertising platform in a few days – AdWords for Facebook that leverages user data and has an image.The image above shows how targeted an ad can be and the blue box clearly states how many people you will be targeting with the campaign, something even Google cannot provide.The targeting is as detailed as age range, education, gender and you can even enter keywords such as hip-hop or brand names like Nintendo Wii.Smart companies will take advantage of this advertising and I have seen one friend use the flyers to generate a highly targeted database for an upcoming energy drink launch. He placed a flyer requesting people to sign-up to be test-tasters for the new energy drink and I was amazed as I sat and watched his inbox fill with completed forms from the website the flyer linked to.Marketers, this is your chance to test the value of this community and truly see targeted advertising at work. Create a custom landing page that encourages a form to be filled out, setup a flyer and target some people in your target market, then let it fly and report back to me.My campaign starts tomorrow, when does yours start?
