Late last year, I was bothered by Buick’s awful targeted advertising on Facebook. They wanted me to “like” their brand for a chance to win a trip to New York City, but I already lived in New York City. Awful use of contextual advertising and enough to make me question whether or not marketers understand the true power of Facebook ads. 

It only took 6 months, but yesterday afternoon I experienced a shining example of targeted Facebook advertising being used to its full potential.  I was innocuously perusing my own profile to check if a link I shared was showing up when I noticed an ad for “Devil In The White City.”

For those who don’t know, “Devil In The White City” is a great murder mystery/historical fiction novel by Erik Larson about Chicago around the time of the World’s Fair in 1893. It is also one of my favorite books ever, and is listed as such on my Facebook profile.  The book was released in 2004, so I was surprised to see a Facebook ad for it.  Upon closer inspection, it was actually an ad for a BRAND NEW ErikLarson book that had just come out called “In The Garden Of Beasts”

As I said on Twitter at the time: 

This is the first time I can remember feeling truly thankful for an ad. I really enjoy Larson’s books, but had no idea there was a new one!

The process of discovering new books is overwhelming to me, so I spend very little time reading book reviews, instead depend on word of mouth from friends and family. Unfortunately, I’m the only nerd in my circle of influence who enjoys historical fiction, so “In The Garden Of Beasts” completely flew under my radar. Luckily, Scribd.com effectively used a portion of their advertising budget* on a timely Facebook ad and I found out about the book the day after it was released. I know how I’ll be spending my weekend. 

* Scribd.com seems to be all in on Facebook advertising. Google searches for “Devil In The White City,” “Erik Larson,” and “Erik Larson new book” don’t show any sponsored links similar to the one I experienced on Facebook.  While Facebook ads have way more of an effect on me than Google ads EVER did, I’m surprised that Scribd didn’t save a portion of their ad budget to cover Google as well.  Perhaps they feel that people Googling those terms are more active in their search of Erik Larson books and are so focused on finding editorial content they won’t even pay attention to Google’s ads. Regardless of the exact strategy, their Facebook ad won me over. Kudos.