How to Use the GDN Planner to Find New Facebook Targeting Opportunities

Alright we’ve all been there – you have an ideal persona, your ideal target market. You have your marketing funnel set up and you’re ready to go.

You know who your target is but you don’t know how to target them. Or maybe, you feel you’ve done a great job targeting your market, but there’s additional opportunities out there…

Well, I’m telling you right now there are new opportunities out there. This blog post will teach you how to use the Google Display Planner to identify new targeting opportunities.

So whether you’re just starting an account build, or you’re looking to put the foot on the pedal of your Facebook campaigns, take this strategy and implement this into your Facebook advertising strategy after reading this article.

What Is The Google Display Planner?

The Google Display Planner is a free AdWords tool you can use to plan your Display Network Campaign.

Click here to get to the tool.

Let’s Get Started…

Here’s the Display Planner upon arrival to the page – we have a few options. In this example, find new targeting ideas.

 

You’ll see this…

 

Click “Get Placement Ideas.” In the following screenshots, take a peek at the comments on the screenshots for instructions:

 

 

 

Open Sheet

 

 

Now we need to filter from highest amount of impressions per week to low. With that said, there’s a range here which won’t show us the true descending order.

Next, click Text to Columns:

 

 

Press Finish then rename columns to Low and High:

(This is our range of potential reach.)

Sort “High” column in descending order to find out what your highest potential reach is:

 

*Quick Tip: Filter and search for “anonymous.google” and delete all mentions of that. Remove filter and re-apply for best data. In this screenshot, I neglected to do so. In doing so, you will have a much cleaner looking list of placements to plug into Facebook.

Now go create your ad sets:

Okay, the reasoning behind us sorting by highest estimated impressions is that theoretically these placements should have well established social presences.

The Top 2 Placements:

1. Business Insider
2. CNBC

Let’s keep in mind on Facebook advertising, interests with 1,000,000+ potential reach may be too broad of an interest to test.

People on CNBC may have absolutely no interest in trading considering the wide array of news they cover.

…What I’m looking for in the display planner is NICHE websites with high potential impressions to find targeting opportunities.

Lets take a look at some more:

• Zero Hedge
• Active Beat
• Market Watch
• Seeking Alpha
• The Street

In this case, these 3 out of the 5 had a big enough social following. Funny enough, these interests are interests I had never found strictly from Facebook’s suggestions.

Keep moving down your excel list until you feel like you have exhausted it.

I’m telling you now there’s a great sweet spot in finding these placements on Facebook.

In this case, Zero Hedge has a reach of 29,000. Market Watch has 260k. That’s a really nice size potential reach for such a niche interest.

Need inspiration for your targeting? Comment below with any questions!