Facebook has begun letting businesses advertise in Marketplace for the first time since introducing the buying and selling platform back in 2016.
Ads in Marketplace can include ads that would run anywhere else on the Facebook platform, such as News Feed ads.
Marketplace ads will appear alongside other products and services, and setting them up is said to be simple.
To create an ad to appear in Marketplace:
- Go to Ads Manager and choose Reach, Traffic, Conversions, Catalog sales or Video views as your objective. Then click Continue.
- Choose your Destination.
- Choose your Audience and define your targeting.
- Choose Automatic Placements or Edit Placements.
- Set your Budget and Schedule.
- Click Next when you’re done.
- Choose your ad’s creative format.
- When you’re finished setting up your ad, click Done and then Place Order.
When creating an advertising campaign, selecting “Automatic Placement” now allows ads to appear in Marketplace as well as Messenger, Instagram, Facebook Audience Network, and News Feed.
In the official announcement, Facebook emphasizes the benefits of being able to run ads in Marketplace:
“Advertising across our platforms enables you to reach your target audience wherever they’re spending time, giving you more opportunities to connect with people likely to be interested in your offerings.”
Facebook has been testing Marketplace ads with select businesses, with results showing they’ve been able to generate up to 2.2X greater return on ad spend.
This marks Facebook’s attempt at monetizing Marketplace, which thus far has been offered as a free platform to buy and sell goods and services to local users.
Facebook recently began letting select users run promoted listings in Marketplace, which are similar to promoted posts in News Feed.
All advertisers targeting audiences in the US and Canada can run ads in Marketplace using the traffic, conversions and product catalog objectives.
Over the next few weeks, advertisers will also be able to target ads in Marketplace to audiences in Australia and New Zealand, and will be able to use the video views and reach objectives as well.
