Facebook Exchange vs. Web Retargeted Ads: Pros & Cons [Infographic]

There has been a lot of talk over the past year about Facebook Exchange (FBX) and web retargeted ads. People like to compare them, which is understandable since many marketing budgets can only support one or the other. In case you don’t know what Facebook Exchange is, I’ll explain it in an over-simplified way which will give you the gist of it. It’s basically a cookie-based technology that allows advertisers to track where you go online and market products to you on Facebook based on that information.

For example, let’s say you are on Amazon looking at a book you might want to buy. Advertisers know that it usually takes more than one time for you to look at something before you buy it. The next time you log into Facebook, you might be served up an ad for that exact same book. I’ll admit, when I first heard about this last year, it freaked me out a bit. I mean, Facebook already know almost everything about us, do they also need to know what I might be considering buying? However, many people think combining this type of targeted advertising on a social site is pure gold, and the results have apparently been pretty good.

Then there are web retargeted ads that work almost the same way as Facebook Exchange, except they aren’t specific to Facebook. If you have a limited marketing budget, and if you want to try this form of advertising, would you go with general web retargeting or Facebook Exchange?

This inforgraphic called Leveraging Behemoths: Standard Web Retargeting vs. Facebook Exchange (FBX) by AdRoll digs deep to answer this question. This infographic is jam-packed with information to help you make the right decision. The answer, as you might have suspected, is that in order to reach the maximum number of people (since there is low overlap) you really have to take advantage of both.

However, according to this article published 2 days ago on The Verge, all this might soon become irrelevant since now two major browsers are blocking cookies from third-party advertisers. Is that going to be the trend? Either way, this is one of the more useful infographics I’ve found. The corresponding blog post on the source article is a good read if you want to click over there. Enjoy!