Facebook launched Marketplace around October 2016.
They describe it themselves as ‘a shopping experience on Facebook for people to buy and sell locally’. It’s also informally referred to as Craigslist-like, in that it closely resembles the USA’s well-known classifieds website. Australians might also liken it to Gumtree.
Who uses Marketplace?
The audience that use Facebook Marketplace includes anyone with a Facebook profile, who happens to click the Marketplace tab, which sits front-and-centre in the Facebook Android app: a position enjoying equal prominence as notifications, friend requests, and the news feed.
That’s a rather notable placement, suggesting that they expect many of their users to make regular use of the feature, or that they wish to promote it’s use to many users.
What’s changed recently?
In 2017, Facebook began testing advertising alongside user-generated listings, to “a small percentage of people using Marketplace”. They started offering space to US advertisers, and later extended that to Canada. Ad placements were made available for Facebook ad campaign objectives: ‘traffic’, ‘conversions’ and ‘product catalog’.
Facebook have now extended availability of Marketplace ads to Australia & New Zealand, and placement has been extended to include ‘video view’ and ‘reach’ campaign objectives.
Why should you care?
A handful of case studies revealed by Facebook Business indicate some impressive return-on-investment stories experienced by the given businesses. After trying out Marketplace in conversion campaigns, accessories company Thread Wallets improved their year-on-year return on ad spend by 41%. Women’s lifestyle media company FabFitFun more than doubled return on ad spend.
This growing space within Facebook’s advertising toolbox will allow advertisers to test the cost effectiveness of their campaigns in a new way. With such positive success stories revealing its potential, we foresee more marketers moving to test their products in Facebook’s Marketplace.
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About Anika
Anika is our digital marketing creative and social media guru, with a passion for everything design and user experience optimisation. She's passionate about strategising new campaigns and utilising her knowledge of the psychology behind the consumer’s journey.
Outside the office she spends most of her time outdoors or trying to be the ultimate master chef.