Facebook Debuts Location For Pages To Help Local Ad Business

Among other benefits, Facebook’s mobile transformation has given marketing partners more ways to track consumers. Running with that theme, the social giant is adding two new location-based ad products for local businesses.
Designed for businesses with multiple locations, the new products should make it easier for them to create local ads for each store and provide more information about nearby consumers.
Using Locations for Pages -- a tool for connecting and managing business Pages with multiple store locations -- businesses can now use information from each of their Pages to create location-specific ad copy, links and call-to-action buttons.
The call-to-action buttons are also dynamic, so when consumers clicks on a “Call Now” or “Get Directions” button, for example, they will be connected to the store nearest to them.
Because each store Page has an address associated with it, advertisers can also now select the stores they want to run ads for, and choose a targeting radius around each one. In turn, ad reports will be available for each location so businesses can track their individual success.
The Page Insights feature has a new tab with information for local businesses to more easily track aggregate demographics and trends associated with the nearby consumers.
Among other insights, this could shed light on businesses’ peak hours and days, the ratio of tourists to local shoppers, and general age and gender trends.
For the first time, Facebook says it will also now show advertisers the percentage of people nearby who have seen their ads.
For Facebook, the changes are part of broader effort to establish itself as the perfect partner for retailers. To that end, the social giant recently rolled out Flightplan -- a self-serve ad tool that combines dynamic product ads and local awareness ads to promote locally-available products to people near a physical store.
The company also recently began inviting more retailers to sell their wares right in users’ News Feeds, and on their respective brand Pages. In partnership with retail software company Shopify, Facebook began giving select U.S. merchants the chance to try out a “Buy” button.
Earlier this year, Facebook also unveiled Product Ads -- a format for brands to show off multiple offerings, and in some cases, their entire inventory.
Despite its promise, however, social media has yet to carve out a significant share of the ecommerce market. In fact, social media channels -- including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest -- contributed just 1.7% of total e-commerce sales, last year, research firm Custora recently reported.

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