P&G To Scale Back Targeted Facebook Ads

P&G is known as Procter and Gamble Co. and are the biggest advertising spenders in the world.  P&G originally performed a huge portion of their marketing through Facebook, as it had been known to be a great source to market directly through, to a subset of shoppers.  After years of pouring millions of dollars into the use of Facebook as an advertising strategy, P&G realized that Facebook was advertising to ineffective target markets.  P&G came to conclusion that successful marketing would need to advertise relative ads to age appropriate consumers, as well as advertising through a more widely used traditional platform, such as digital sites and the television. P&G exercised their concluded hypothesis for the first time, when they tried targeting ads for their febreze air freshener specifically to pet owners and households with large families.  Febreze found that sales stagnated during the effort, but rose when the campaign was additionally aired on the television and digital sites.  After P&G’s success of discovering their newly found marketing strategy, several other companies caught on, and they too found success.  Facebook acknowledged marketers needs to be allowed advertising to specific target markets of age appropriate consumers, and they made them readily available to marketers by using mass reach and personalized targeting.  Facebook is actually one of today’s number one sources used for marketing. 

I find marketing quite interesting because it is such a major form of communication and awareness in today’s world of business, innovation, and life.  I find relevance of marketing strategies, applicable to the product life cycle in the aspect that changing your marketing strategy can actually keep a product in the growth or maturity stage and out of ever reaching the decline stage.  Marketing strategy is also applicable to building product recognition and consumer satisfaction, leading to positive consumer relations and an increase in customer return rate and profits.  Marketing is life, especially in the business world. 

Link to WSJ:

         http://www.wsj.com/articles/p-g-to-scale-back-targeted-facebook-ads-1470760949