Who are the top employers as mentioned in profiles by Facebook users in the United States? Unsurprisingly Wal-Mart is near the top, with over 139,000 employees but it is dwarfed by the US Army which claims over 329,000 users who indicate it as their ‘workplace’ on Facebook.
Some of these companies (e.g. Hollister, Abercrombie) have far more users in Facebook than they do in LinkedIn, which is the professional network. On LinkedIn for example, Abercrombie shows 3,443 employees worldwide. Starbucks does a bit better with 14,859 users on LinkedIn etc. Companies that skew tech and professional will have more of their employees on LinkedIn of course. IBM and all its subsidiaries is a great example, with over 183,000 employees shown on LinkedIn across the globe (the Facebook figures above are US-only).
Recruiters have long been users of LinkedIn for targeting specific kinds of users via job postings or direct contact, but Facebook is also seeing a large number of recruiting and other ads targeting user workplaces. One of the ways to get a sense of that is to analyze the average suggested CPC bid prices for specific companies. For example, it will cost you 40% more to target a Microsoft employee versus a Target employee via Facebook.
Note: All of these companies are available to target on Facebook via their Facebook Ads advertising system and/or via Ads API partners. optim.al is one of Facebook’s closed beta API partners, and we are working with a variety of advertisers (large and small) to help them hone in on the right audience for their ads. Contact us to learn more about the powerful multivariate ad and audience testing system optim.al. Disclaimer: our CEO is a former LinkedIn employee and current shareholder.