Facebook has unveiled a new feature for marketers called local awareness ads which enable businesses to target consumers with hyper-localised ads in the hope of driving traffic to physical locations.

The new ads, which will be available in the US in the next few weeks and globally over the coming months, use Facebooks standard ad creation tools, but enable businesses to set a radius around their location within which they want the ad to be targeted.

Facebook has been pushing towards hyper-local advertising for some time, having purchased ad targeting company Rel8tion, who used similar technology, back in early 2011 and hinting that always-on location sharing could power such ads in 2012.

The ads are not currently served in real-time, instead targeting consumers who live within the set radius, or have been there recently, but it doesnt require much of a stretch to imagine that real-time targeting of users within a geo-fenced region is far away.

“Local awareness ads were built with privacy in mind,” said Facebook in a blog post announcing the feature. “Advertisers select locations, not specific individuals, for local awareness ads. Facebook does not tell advertisers which specific people are in any audience and, as with our other advertising products, all audiences must meet a minimum required size.

“People have control over the recent location information they share with Facebook and will only see ads based on their recent location if location services are enabled on their phone.”