Juice Up Your Facebook Ads Campaigns by Targeting Top TV Shows
With Facebook Ads cracking down on affiliate offers and limiting what they are approving, it’s important to always come up with new ways to promote offers. One of the largest groups of “interests” in Facebook, is television shows and movies. What’s also great about this target audience, is that if you are going to post a show as your interest, it’s likely you are pretty passionate about the show, and anything relating to it would catch your eye.
Here’s a list on some of the top TV shows and their target audience size.
| TV Shows (Interest) | Fans |
|---|---|
| Family Guy | 5,351,572 |
| South Park | 4,595,997 |
| House | 4,847,081 |
| The Office | 2,515,347 |
| Lost | 2,972,203 |
| Gossip Girl | 2,747,198 |
| Scrubs | 2,819,834 |
| Two and a Half Men | 2,439,330 |
| Prison Break | 2,067,752 |
| Desperate Housewives | 1,235,169 |
| CSI: Miami | 1,153,105 |
| Seinfeld | 1,036,278 |
As you can see, these are some pretty serious numbers, and that’s only a handful of TV shows to choose from. InsideFacebook wrote a post today about how TV shows dominate Facebook interests, and gives even more detail on the growth of these interests over a weekly basis. If you click any of the interest names above, you will also be sent to the InsideFacebook stats page for that individual interest, where you can see a growth chart of fans and view the office fan page.
So what’s the big deal about targeting TV shows anyway, it’s not like you can make money off telling people to go watch the show on TV? While that’s true, and the idea of trying to sell DVD sets to users for a small commission also won’t work… it does leave a lot of room for creativity. If you were a company like Blockbuster or NetFlix, you could target this audience and send them to a relative landing page with their specific shows of interest and try to convert them into the member. I’ve tried this with their affiliate offers and the conversions were low, but there was clicks and a lot of interest.
Another option is to build your creatives or landing pages around an offer. Several times I have seen a completely irrelevant offer being advertised, but with a Homer Simpson or South Park cartoon. It wasn’t relevant, but it did catch my eye… this is also something that can be played with.
It’s time to get creative with your advertising. How many TV shows do you have in your Facebook interests, and is anyone targeting ads in your direction?
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Facebook will promptly put the slap down on your offer if you don’t have the image directly relating to the offer. So DVD box sets and possibly netflix rentals will work. I think we are done with the display a picture of Family Guy and have it go to a dating lander though.
Interesting idea. It could be tricky to really do well targeting tv show fans, but with that many people there's gotta be some money to be made. You just have to think outside the box and come up with some related products that those people would be interested in. Shows like these always have many related branded items….t-shirts, coffee mugs, toys, etc.
Well, problem with your cartoon assumption is that Facebook will not allow irrelevant images and ad copies, so if you used a Simpson theme, your page and offer need to match up with that. Don’t think there are many Simpson related cpa offers out there. You can’t just link it to a ringtones or gaming offer because Facebook would disapprove the ad as irrelevant unless it was for a Simpsons product specifically. In addition, you can’t call-out user attributes anymore such as “Attention Simpsons Fans.”
I understand what you are trying to get at with thinking differently and more creatively with targeting now that Facebook took this hard stance, this kind of marketing is something that Facebook doesn’t want…at least that is what I am seeing from my campaigns of testing different ad copies/images. Not saying people won’t get ads like this through, just that shit like this hasn’t worked for me since the latest policy changes.
Ringtones is a great example of something that would work, while paying a high CPA. Of course Facebook isn’t going to approve ringtone offers, but it’s a great example of a high paying CPA offer that you could sync up with all TV shows and their intro songs.
Installs and games are another example of how good money and high CTRs can be acquired. I still see the “what would your baby look like” and other crap still advertised on Facebook… imagine an affiliate offer like “How would you look as a Simpson?”.
Facebook is making it very tough on the majority of affiliate offers, which is makes it quite rewarding for anyone who can sync these two concept together.
Yes, Facebook are certainly playing hardball. 🙁 I'm interested in seeing what sort of creative ideas people come up with that pass through their approval. I'm sure it'll be something remarkable given how strict they are being. But the scope is very limited so I think we'll only be seeing very standard ads like for example, the 'Simpsonize Yourself' app that became popular during the Simpsons movie release. Only those sort of 'official' promotion ads by the TV show's copyright holder itself.
Till then,
Jean
Interesting idea, but you're right you need to find an offer that will convert for this. Maybe try out a tv show email submit. I've seen a southpark DVD set email submit somewhere. I'm not sure if it is active anymore.
This is really a good approach. Correct me if I am wrong. The technique is to target audience of TV shows with the closer match to the target audience of your product/service/brand. 🙂
I actually did that since last year although it was never close to being consistent in terms of results. But yea you're right its another creative way to get traffic.
Why not "create" your own "free" offer that is relevant to a CPA offer and is also within FB terms? Make it a simple email submit, now you have a list. Hmm.
I own TV Show related site and I find it extremely difficult to sell anything, on and out of Facebook. Conversion is really low, earnings peer unit also.
Selling DVDs work the best when series ends, during summer, but you gotta sell hundreds of DVDs to earn good money.
Netflix offers only old seasons ( not new episodes ) and majority of people who visit show related websites or fan pages are watching latest episodes. Not interested.
If Hulu.com would have an affiliate program that could work. But it won't – it's free, at least for now.
Agreed.. there is a lot of opportunity from communities for marketing. Targeting related communities is one of the most easiest avenues which may be tried.
My favorite is "Familiy Guy".That is the most funniest show ever! 🙂
While tv show fans might be a little tough to monetize, I think this opens up a lot of other possibilities. Targeting people based on their interests is even better than just targeting specific demographics based on age, gender or location. Try doing some brainstorming for applicable interests for your target market.
@Baby England Kit: at the beginning it’s good to buy some traffic to your page – app. With enough users it’s more likely to go viral.
It's a great idea, and such great use of facebooks popular feature. What would be interesting to know is, what would you have done differently if you are going to run the campaign again? Just mind buggling!