The new feature lets marketers push targeted ads based on users' preferences and purchases

May 3, 2013 11:46 GMT  ·  By

Facebook has introduced a new tool that helps developers and marketers target users with specific adverts based on the app purchases and microtransactions they made.

A new feature called Custom Audiences is buried in the latest SDK and it’s the one that will allow a more relevant advertising system on the Facebook website and apps, The Next Web reports.

This feature could be used by retailers to notify users about certain products or items that they might be interested in, based on what they’re really passionate about.

Similarly, a video game developer could use the feature to figure out what type of incentives to use for certain people.

While advertisements might not be the Facebook’s user favorite feature of the social network, the company does need to make money somehow.

Since Facebook is a free service, a good advertising model needs to be set in place if Zuckerberg wants to keep the network running.

Basically, Customer Audiences is a way for Facebook advertisers to push their products without making the users quit the service.

“Custom audiences let marketers find their offline audiences among Facebook users. Using email addresses, phone numbers, Facebook user IDs or app user ID's to make the match, you can now find the exact people you want to talk to, in custom audiences that are defined by what you already know,” a tutorial on the social network reads.

This means that advertisers can now target their audiences with more accuracy.

As we mentioned before, advertising is a critical aspect of Facebook. For the first quarter of the year, advertising revenue was of $1.25 billion (€0.94 billion), which racks up to 85% of the total revenue.

The number also shows that the company has been making serious progress in this department, since the sum is 43 percent over last year’s results.