Epsilon and Facebook Partner to Help Brands Create Stronger Online Connections with Customers and Prospects

Features Like Partner Categories Drive Value for Marketers; More Effective and Relevant Targeting on Facebook

DALLAS, TX — — Epsilon, the global leader in delivering direct-to-consumer connections that drive business performance, today announced the expansion of its partnership with Facebook to include partner categories targeting.

In February, Facebook announced the extension of its targeting feature, custom audiences, to include select third parties to further improve marketers’ ability to reach the right customers on Facebook and to provide more relevant ads. As one of those select partners, Epsilon enables marketers to retain existing customers and acquire new customers by matching custom data sets to the Facebook user base and targeting campaigns to these custom lists. All matching is done in a privacy safe way. Epsilon also provides comprehensive metrics for marketers to analyze campaign effectiveness and ROI.

Epsilon and Facebook are now offering an additional form of targeting, partner categories, that allows brands to reach groups of people based on interests they have expressed and actions they have taken off of Facebook. For example, brands can reach people based on characteristics such as “People who are interested in donating to charitable causes” or “People who subscribe to magazines.” Partner categories will also help brands identify consumers based on the type of business they work in or their occupation. Then brands can target these groups of people on Facebook with relevant content that appeals to their interests, profession and buying habits.

“Our ultimate goal is to make the ads people see on Facebook as relevant as the information they see from their friends,” said Yvette Lui, Director of Global Marketing Solutions, Global Data & Audience Partnerships at Facebook. “Targeting features like custom audiences and partner categories help make this possible. Our partnership with Epsilon gives marketers a more accurate and effective way to reach the right groups of real people, which makes for a better ad experience"

“There is a tremendous opportunity for marketers to leverage offline data to reach their customers and prospective customers where and when they are deeply engaged. With the right data and insights, marketers can build engagement and share valuable, relevant offers and information. We’ve worked across multiple brands and have used the robust targeting of our partnership to drive a greater than 30% average ROI so far,” said Eric Stein, EVP of Online Solutions at Epsilon. “Epsilon understands data and how to make insights actionable to drive meaningful conversations with customers both online and offline. Our partnership with Facebook will help marketers achieve strong results and uncover return on their marketing investment.”

Epsilon and Facebook work to ensure that privacy and data protection are key tenets in developing their products. In the creation of these pre-defined categories, no personal information is shared between Facebook and Epsilon. Facebook users continue to have the same control over the ads they currently see on Facebook, whether they are targeted based on partner categories or not. Additionally, consumers can opt-out of receiving marketing messages and also understand the type of data Epsilon has by visiting Epsilon’s Consumer Guide to Direct Marketing.

For more information about partner categories, visit Facebook’s blog.