Do you have a Facebook Page, Group or Event?  If you do, you will be super excited about the new opportunity Facebook is providing today.

Now you Facebook advertisers can deliver ads to the friends of people already connected with your Page,  Group or Event with something called “Friends of Connection” targeting.

Facebook user Data and Terms of Service might be an advertisers dream and a users nightmare

In addition to targeting your connections’ friends, EVERY “Friends of connection” targeted ad promoting a Page or Event includes social content about the friend’s interaction with your business.  This will increase the relevancy of your ad to the recipient – perhaps increasing the likelihood of a clickthrough.  Good for business.  Good for Facebook.  But good for Facebook users?

We’ll see.

Facebook owning your content means they can use your actions on the site to market to your friends.  Now this brings back scary visions from the days of Facebook revolts.  Remember the Facebook Beacon social advertising platform revolt in November 2007 and changes to terms of service changes revolt in February 2009.  Users of Facebook are notoriously anxious about how their personal data is used.  Of course Facebooks value is in large part due to the huge volume of user information that is generated each day.

How “Friends of Connection” advertising utilizes user data

Facebook explains:

  For example, Priya is a fan of the Nordstrom, Inc. Page. When Nordstrom, Inc. promotes their Facebook Page, they can choose to target ads to Priya’s friends by selecting the “Friends of connection” filter. Priya’s friends will receive the Nordstrom, Inc. ad with the following sentence: “Priya Gupta is a fan of this Page.” Priya’s friends are naturally more interested because Priya’s interaction with Nordstrom, Inc. is showcased directly in the ad.

If you are a Facebook advertiser you might want to give this new powerful advertising option a try, after all it might not be here for long.