A new ad prod­uct from Face­book gives retail­ers anoth­er way to tar­get con­sumers who are close to phys­i­cal store loca­tions, which could help brands con­nect with mobile shop­pers look­ing for deals this hol­i­day sea­son.

Face­book has launched local aware­ness ads, a fea­ture that shows ads to users near busi­ness loca­tions, which Face­book says will make adver­tis­ing for local busi­ness­es eas­i­er and more effec­tive. These ads could also help attract con­sumers close to phys­i­cal stores, which, in turn, could help dri­ve sales this hol­i­day sea­son among shop­pers using their mobile devices to research prod­ucts and find the best deals. “We think they’re the best way for local busi­ness­es to reach peo­ple near them, and the best way for peo­ple who use Face­book to dis­cov­er more use­ful things in their area,” Face­book said in a blog post.

To cre­ate an ad, busi­ness­es select “Local Aware­ness” in Facebook’s Ads Cre­ate tool, choose the page of the busi­ness they want to pro­mote and enter the address and the radius around which they want to adver­tise. A map will dis­play the area cov­ered by the ad, Face­book said. “Our sys­tem uses all this infor­ma­tion to cre­ate an audi­ence for the ad that includes peo­ple who live near­by or were recent­ly near your busi­ness,” the plat­form added. Adver­tis­ers also choose the age and gen­der of their audi­ence and set a bud­get and dura­tion for the ad, as well as imagery and text. Based on the set­tings, Face­book will show how many peo­ple adver­tis­ers can expect to reach each day the ad runs.

Because adver­tis­ers select loca­tions instead of spe­cif­ic indi­vid­u­als, Face­book says it does not tell adver­tis­ers which spe­cif­ic users are in a giv­en audi­ence, which helps pro­tect user pri­va­cy. Accord­ing to Face­book, con­ver­sa­tions with adver­tis­ers have shown that when it comes to dri­ving in-store sales, an ad’s reach is more impor­tant than the engage­ment it receives, like clicks, com­ments or likes. “So we’ve designed local aware­ness ads to help busi­ness­es reach the most peo­ple pos­si­ble in an area,” the plat­form says. And this could come in handy this hol­i­day sea­son. Accord­ing to a recent whitepa­per from online adver­tis­ing man­age­ment plat­form Marin Soft­ware, The Retail­ers’ Last Minute Guide to Hol­i­day Adver­tis­ing on Face­book, retail­ers increased spend in the chan­nel by 67 per­cent over the 2013 hol­i­day sea­son ver­sus 2012, which Marin says is “a tes­ta­ment to the effi­ca­cy of Face­book to reach high­ly tar­get­ed, high­ly engaged audi­ences across all stages of the pur­chase cycle.” What’s more, Marin said, “Retail­ers are increas­ing­ly turn­ing to Face­book to engage with their cus­tomers, share pro­mo­tions, intro­duce new prod­ucts, dri­ve traf­fic to their web­sites, and encour­age shop­pers to vis­it their phys­i­cal store loca­tions.”

In addi­tion, pre­dic­tive mar­ket­ing soft­ware provider Ken­shoo recent­ly con­duct­ed a webi­nar with Bing Ads on hol­i­day tips in which Bing said 37 per­cent of hol­i­day shop­pers will use online coupons more this year and 27 per­cent said they will only buy gifts at stores where they have coupons. For her part, Kel­ly Wrather, senior man­ag­er of con­tent mar­ket­ing at Ken­shoo, says she thinks Facebook’s local aware­ness ads will help dri­ve these hol­i­day shop­pers look­ing for dis­counts. Mobile share is grow­ing but the major­i­ty of rev­enue isn’t com­ing from these devices, she notes.

“Many con­sumers on-the-go are look­ing for store or prod­uct infor­ma­tion and might not actu­al­ly com­plete a sale until once in-store,” Wrather said. “A sur­vey we con­duct­ed found that most mar­keters (73 per­cent) see mobile (search in this instance) most effec­tive as a mid-fun­nel dri­ver (research/browsing activ­i­ties). When asked about what types of activ­i­ties con­sumers might engage in while con­duct­ing shop­ping research in stores, 73 per­cent of mar­keters strong­ly felt that these in-store shop­pers used their mobile devices to research bet­ter prices.”

Face­book local aware­ness ads will roll out to U.S. adver­tis­ers in the com­ing weeks and glob­al­ly in the com­ing months.