Complaints about Meta’s algorithmic targeting are mostly misguided. Meta’s ability to find the people who are most willing to perform your desired action is extremely effective. But there is a fatal flaw that impacts optimization for any event that isn’t a purchase event.

Before you come at me about the issues with algorithmic targeting, I get it. I say that it’s “effective” because it’s efficient at doing exactly what it’s supposed to do. The flaw prevents it from being far more valuable.

Some advertisers will spend without seeing it. They see the results and don’t ask questions. Others will reject algorithmic targeting entirely without understanding why they aren’t getting the results that they desire.

There is a problem that is frustratingly difficult, if not impossible, for advertisers to solve. It’s Meta’s problem to fix, and I’ve been complaining about it for years.

I know, I’m being cryptic. It’s not easy to explain in an opening paragraph.

Let’s back up…

Who Sees Your Ads?

First, it’s important to understand that the definition of “targeting” has changed. I’d say that this evolution is part of what confuses advertisers. We don’t know how to communicate what “this” is now.

Not long ago, I asserted that targeting was the most critical factor to the success of your ads. Good ad copy and creative couldn’t recover from a bad targeting pool.

Of course, our inputs are only kinda sorta considered now when it comes to the audience that sees our ads.

1. Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns allow for virtually no targeting inputs at all. No detailed targeting, lookalike audiences, custom audiences, or much of anything.

2. Advantage+ Audience is the default option for defining your audience now. You can define a few things like location and age minimum, but your inputs are otherwise seen as suggestions (and it’s questionable how much they’re considered at all).

3. Original Audiences tend to be the fall-back for advertisers who want to retain targeting control. But, most don’t realize that their audience is usually expanded, especially when optimizing for conversions.

The primary lever that controls who sees your ads is the performance goal.

If you’re able to strictly define your audience (which is rare), Meta will find the people within that audience who are most likely to perform the action that you want.

If your inputs are seen as suggestions, your audience is expanded, or you don’t provide any inputs at all beyond the basics, Meta will find those people within the largest pools of people.

Is this targeting? Not really. It’s providing some initial suggestions and constraints and defining what you want so that Meta can find the people who will lead to results.

Like I said at the top, Meta is actually very good at this. Fewer constraints will almost always lead to more and cheaper results. But, that’s not without some problems.

When Optimization is Most Effective

Meta is best at generating high-quality results with minimal guidance when you are able to clearly articulate what you want. There are three primary examples of this…

1. Maximize Conversions (Purchase Event).

This requires that you’ve set up conversion event tracking and have defined purchase events. Meta will focus on getting you the most purchases within your budget.

2. Maximize Value (Purchase Event).

This requires that you pass value with your purchase events and have a variety of purchase prices. You may get less volume of purchases in this case, but Meta will focus on generating the highest Return on Ad Spend.

3. Maximize Conversion Leads.

Conversion Leads optimization is possible when using instant forms and requires several months of setup to define your funnel. Meta will then optimize to show your ads to people who will most likely become high-quality leads.

It doesn’t mean that you’re guaranteed to get great results when using any of these three approaches (so many factors contribute to that). But these are the times when you and Meta are on the same page regarding what you want.

Where Optimization Struggles

The reason the above three approaches to optimization work is that there is agreement over what a quality result looks like. You’ve defined that you want more purchases, more value, or more conversion leads, and Meta will focus on getting you those things. If successful, there shouldn’t be a dispute about the quality of those results.

Where this goes wrong is when using virtually any other performance goal. It includes some performance goals that are notorious for quality issues:

• Link Clicks
• Landing Page Views
• ThruPlays
• Post Engagement

But it can also include conversions that don’t result in a purchase. If you choose the performance goal to maximize conversions and select Lead or Website Registration as your conversion event, you likely run into a regular battle.

In all of these cases, you’ve only begun to define what you want. But you and Meta aren’t going to be on the same page.

If you choose to maximize link clicks or landing page views, Meta will focus on getting you as many link clicks or landing page views as possible. But you want quality traffic, not just any traffic.

If you maximize ThruPlays, Meta will show your ads to people most likely to watch at least 15 seconds of your video. But, that’s going to include people who are forced to watch your video. You want quality views of people who choose to watch, not just any views.

If you maximize conversions where the focus is on leads, Meta will try to get you as many leads as possible. But you want quality leads who are likely to buy from you, not just any leads.

In each case, Meta doesn’t care at all about quality. The algorithm’s only focus is on getting you as many of the action that you said you want.

This has always been an issue. But it’s less of an issue when you can tightly define your audience. When you can’t, Meta has fewer constraints to find results — and the likelihood for quality issues increases.

Exploited Weaknesses

This is the perfect storm for quality issues.

1. An inability to strictly define your audience.
2. An inability to define a quality action.
3. Weaknesses that can help Meta generate a high volume of the actions that you want

Understand that Meta’s delivery algorithm knows where to look to find the action that you want. This isn’t always good.

This can be as simple as going after people who are likely to act because they’ve visited your website or engaged with your ads. It can also be going after people who have engaged with similar products or businesses.

But, it can also be due to weaknesses that are exploited to get you more results.

1. Placements.

If you choose a performance goal to maximize link clicks or landing page views, expect that a large percentage of your impressions will be focused on Audience Network. Meta knows that it can get clicks there. It’s not clear whether these are from accidental clicks, bots, or click farms (before they’re detected), but you can bet you’ll get lots of low-quality clicks.

If you choose to maximize ThruPlays, a large percentage of your impressions will go to placements where people are forced to watch at least 15 seconds of your video. Audience Network Rewarded Video, which incentivizes people to watch videos in exchange for virtual currency or something else of value, is notorious for this. I’ve had cases where I’ve had more ThruPlays than people reached for this reason.

2. Countries.

If you target multiple countries at once and there’s an imbalance of cost to reach people in those countries, you may then see an imbalance in distribution. Especially if you choose to maximize top-of-the-funnel actions, Meta will try to get you the most actions possible within your budget. While this doesn’t guarantee lower quality results, it can be a contributing factor — particularly when a country is known for bots and low-quality accounts.

3. Ages.

If you aren’t able to restrict by age, this can be a weakness that will be tapped to generate more results. I can only speak from personal experience on this, but it seems that older people are much more likely to click on and engage with ads. But that doesn’t mean that they are a likely customer. If you are generating a high number of low-quality leads, it’s possible that Meta is focusing impressions on older people because it’s leading to more results.

4. Genders.

Let’s say that your business caters to women. In theory, you may not need to limit your audience when maximizing conversions when the conversion event is a purchase. The algorithm will try to get you more purchases and should adjust when men don’t buy.

But that’s not the case if you optimize for link clicks, landing page views, post engagement, or ThruPlays. Even though they may not be your target customer, men may engage at a high rate. And that will lead to low-quality results.

5. Low-Quality Accounts.

This is a big bucket that includes bots (before they’re detected), spam accounts, and real people who want to click on everything. If they perform the action that you’ve defined in your performance goal, these are going to be some of the primary people who see your ads. They’ll get you a bunch of cheap results, but that doesn’t mean those results are the quality that you desire.

NOTE: These five weaknesses aren’t nearly as big of an issue when optimizing for conversions when your conversion event is a purchase. The reason is that if it doesn’t lead to the action that you want (a purchase), the algorithm adjusts. But this is why these weaknesses are so problematic for any other performance goal.

Age and Gender and Advantage+ Audience

One of the primary complaints about Advantage+ Audience is that age maximum and gender aren’t audience controls. You can provide an age maximum and gender, but they are only audience suggestions.

Once again, this should not be a big deal if you can accurately define the action that you want, like a purchase. But it otherwise has the potential to make Advantage+ Audience unusable when using any other performance goal.

Earlier, I mentioned having this challenge with leads. It’s not always a problem, but I’ve found that when I begin to get “surprisingly good results,” it’s usually because a high percentage of my budget is getting spent on an older audience.

There’s unfortunately no easy way around it. I’ve tried an age maximum suggestion, but Meta immediately ignores it because I can get more of the results I “want” by reaching an older audience. You can switch to original audiences and define the age maximum, but that’s not necessarily a great solution either. I don’t necessarily want to cut off all ad spend to an older audience. I just don’t want it to monopolize my budget.

The Fatal Flaw

The fatal flaw in Meta ads targeting and optimization is that, except in rare cases, Meta doesn’t know what we want. We’ve defined what we want in very general terms (link clicks, landing page views, leads, ThruPlays, etc.).

It’s the combination of this weakness in optimization and the growing reliance on algorithmic targeting that makes the problem worse. Meta’s systems are powerfully good at finding people who are willing to perform the action that you want.

Unfortunately, the action that “you want” isn’t necessarily exactly what you’ve defined with the performance goal. And that’s what leads to low-quality results and wasted ad spend.

The Solution: It’s Complicated

To a point, it’s simple. We don’t necessarily need more targeting control. It shouldn’t be necessary to require the ability to restrict by age or gender. The solution also isn’t to eliminate Advantage+ Audience or audience expansion through the various Advantage Audience tools.

The solution hasn’t changed since I first complained about it years ago: We need to be able to more precisely define what we want.

Instead of any old traffic, we want people who are going to spend time on our website, perform several actions, and make return visits.

Instead of any views of our videos, we want people who signal interest (willingly watch without being forced, search out more videos, and provide other engagement).

Instead of any leads, we want people who perform other actions that prove that they are quality leads — even if it’s not an eventual purchase.

I’m not sure how exactly Meta would implement this. It could be by providing a secondary performance goal. Or maybe it would be providing options of “volume” and “quality” actions where other factors are considered.

But the current flaws in optimization are old and primitive. Not only were they unacceptable years ago, they enhance the problem with the development of algorithmic targeting.

This needs to be fixed.

Your Turn

What are your thoughts?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post Meta Ads Targeting and Optimization’s Fatal Flaw appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

I contend that the most underrated action you take when creating a Meta ads campaign is selecting your performance goal. Too many advertisers take it for granted or simply don’t realize the impact it has on ad delivery.

In this day of audience expansion and broad targeting, the performance goal is more important than ever before. Before, your optimization event helped find people within your selected audience who are most likely to perform your desired action. But now, it’s what helps find people beyond your targeting inputs, too.

The performance goal is one of a handful of factors (along with targeting inputs and ad copy and creative) that have direct impact on who will see your ads. Do not gloss over this.

But, there is some understandable confusion around performance goals, too. There are 71 different possible ways, based on different objectives and conversion locations, to select 21 unique performance goals.

Does how you get there matter? What does each performance goal actually do? When should you use them?

Consider this your guide…

The Role of Campaign Objectives

It’s common for advertisers to misunderstand the role of campaign objectives. It’s understandable since this requires you to literally define what you’re trying to accomplish.

While the campaign objective helps streamline the campaign creation process by limiting the options available in the ad set and ad based on this selection, its importance stops there. The objective itself doesn’t determine how your ads are delivered.

Your performance goal does.

Several Paths to the Same Goal

One of the easiest examples of how the performance goal is more critical than the campaign objective is Impressions. There are nine different combinations of campaign objective, conversion location, and engagement type that will lead to this performance goal.

But in each case, it’s the same.

No matter how you get there, the Impressions performance goal means that Meta will try to show your ads to people as many times as possible. That’s it. Nothing else.

It doesn’t matter if you get to this performance goal from the Sales objective. Meta won’t have a secondary goal of conversions or purchases. In fact, there’s even a warning message when you select Impressions when the objective is Sales so that you know this.

The selection of a performance goal should be one of your top priorities when creating a campaign. Don’t get cute. In most cases, pick the performance goal that most accurately reflects the action that you want.

How you get there via objective, conversion location, and ad type doesn’t matter much. It could impact some ad settings that are available, but otherwise the performance goal — regardless of objective — defines success and determines how your ads are delivered.

There are 71 different ways to select one of 21 different performance goals. Focus on the goal that you want first.

Here is a collection of those 21 performance goals (subject to change, but as of February, 2024), Meta’s definitions, the various combinations that allow you to access them, and when you might use them…

1. 2-Second Continuous Video Views

Definition: We’ll try to show your video ads to people who are likely to watch 2 continuous seconds or more. Most 2-second continuous video views will have at least 50% of the video pixels on screen.

Objectives (2 combinations):

• Awareness
• Engagement (Conversion Location: On Your Ad, Engagement Type: Video Views)

When to use it: Only when the volume of video views is more important to you than the quality of those views.

2. Ad Recall Lift

Definition: We’ll try to show your ads to people who are likely to remember seeing them.

Objectives:

• Awareness

When to use it: Typically when spending larger budgets and you want your ads to improve overall awareness.

3. Daily Unique Reach

Definition: We’ll try to show your ads to people up to once per day.

Objectives (11 combinations):

• Engagement (Conversion Location: App)
• Engagement (Conversion Location: On Your Ad, Engagement Type: Event Responses)
• Engagement (Conversion Location: On Your Ad, Engagement Type: Post Engagement)
• Engagement (Conversion Location: Website)
• Leads (Conversion Location: App)
• Leads (Conversion Location: Website)
• Sales (Conversion Location: App)
• Sales (Conversion Location: Website)
• Traffic (Conversion Location: App)
• Traffic (Conversion Location: Messaging Apps)
• Traffic (Conversion Location: Website)

When to use it: You don’t have a specific goal and you want to cap the amount of impressions shown to one per day.

4. Engagement With a Post

Definition: We’ll try to show your ads to the people most likely to like, share or comment on your post.

Objectives (2 combinations):

• Engagement (Conversion Location: On Your Ad, Engagement Type: Event Responses)
• Engagement (Conversion Location: On Your Ad, Engagement Type: Post Engagement)

When to use it: The volume of engagement with your ads is more important to you than the specific actions people take, possibly for social proof.

5. App Events

Definition: We’ll try to show your ads to the people most likely to take a specific action in your app at least once.

Objectives (4 combinations):

• App Promotion
• Engagement (Conversion Location: App)
• Leads (Conversion Location: App)
• Sales (Conversion Location: App)

When to use it: There is a specific action that you want people to take within your app.

6. App Installs

Definition: We’ll try to show your ads to the people most likely to install your app.

Objectives:

• App Promotion

When to use it: Increase the number of installs of your app, regardless of what they do next.

7. Calls

Definition: We’ll try to deliver your ads to try to get you the most possible calls and report the number of times the call button in the call confirmation dialogue is clicked.

Objectives (4 combinations):

• Engagement (Conversion Location: Calls)
• Traffic (Conversion Location: Calls)
• Sales (Conversion Location: Calls)
• Leads (Conversion Location: Calls)

When to use it: Increase the number of calls into a call center that can handle those requests.

8. Conversations

Definition: We’ll try to show your ads to people most likely to have a conversation with you through messaging.

Objectives (4 combinations):

• Engagement (Conversion Location: Messaging Apps)
• Sales (Conversion Location: Messaging Apps)
• Traffic (Conversion Location: Messaging Apps)
• Traffic (Conversion Location: Website)

When to use it: You want to increase the number of conversations within messaging apps, but you don’t have a specific action that you want them to take. Also, make sure that you have personnel to manage these conversations.

9. Conversion Leads

Definition: We’ll try to show your ads to the people most likely to convert after sharing their contact information with you.

Objectives:

• Leads (Conversion Location: Instant Forms)

When to use it: The lead itself isn’t as important to you as the eventual sale or other action that happens later. Additional setup is required, and this approach is most suitable when generating a higher volume of leads. The typical scenario is when sales people follow up with and close leads.

10. Conversions

Definition: We’ll try to show your ads to the people most likely to take a specific action on your website.

Objectives (4 combinations):

• Engagement (Conversion Location: Website)
• Leads (Conversion Location: Website)
• Sales (Conversion Location: Website)
• Sales (Conversion Location: Website and App)

When to use it: There is a specific action that you want people to take on your website, defined by a standard (purchase, lead, complete registration) or custom event.

11. Event Responses

Definition: We’ll try to show your ads to the people most likely to respond to your event.

Objectives:

• Engagement (Conversion Location: On Your Ad, Engagement Type: Event Responses)

When to use it: You want to generate more responses to your virtual or physical event.

12. Impressions

Definition: We’ll try to show your ads to people as many times as possible.

Objectives (9 combinations):

• Awareness
• Engagement (Conversion Location: Messaging Apps, Ad Type: Sponsored Message)
• Engagement (Conversion Location: On Your Ad, Engagement Type: Event Responses)
• Engagement (Conversion Location: On Your Ad, Engagement Type: Post Engagement)
• Engagement (Conversion Location: Website)
• Leads (Conversion Location: Website)
• Sales (Conversion Location: Website)
• Traffic (Conversion Location: Messaging Apps)
• Traffic (Conversion Location: Website)

When to use it: You want to flood people with your ads, but the number of people you reach is less important than the number of total impressions.

13. Instagram Profile Visits

Definition: We’ll try to show your ads to the people most likely to visit Instagram profile linked in your ad. (unofficial, but assumed definition)

Objectives:

• Traffic (Conversion Location: Instagram Profile)

When to use it: You want to drive people to your Instagram profile to hopefully generate more follows or actions there (though these actions aren’t considered by the performance goal).

14. Landing Page Views

Definition: We’ll try to show your ads to the people most likely to view the website or Instant Experience linked in your ad.

Objectives (4 combinations):

• Engagement (Conversion Location: Website)
• Leads (Conversion Location: Website)
• Sales Conversion Location: Website)
• Traffic (Conversion Location: Website)

When to use it: You want to drive traffic to your website, but there isn’t a specific action that you want people to take — or you don’t have the budget to properly optimize for another event. Know that this will often result in low-quality traffic.

15. Leads

Definition: We’ll try to show your ads to the people most likely to share their contact information with you.

Objectives (4 combinations):

• Leads (Conversion Location: Instagram)
• Leads (Conversion Location: Instant Forms)
• Leads (Conversion Location: Instant Forms and Messenger)
• Leads (Conversion Location: Messenger)

When to use it: You want to build a list of contacts who could become potential paying customers, without sending people to your website. Ideally, you use a third-party tool to sync these contacts to your CRM.

16. Link Clicks

Definition: We’ll try to show your ads to the people most likely to click on them.

Objectives (11 combinations):

• App Promotion
• Engagement (Conversion Location: App)
• Engagement (Conversion Location: On Your Ad, Engagement Type: Group Joins)
• Engagement (Conversion Location: Website)
• Leads (Conversion Location: App)
• Leads (Conversion Location: Website)
• Sales (Conversion Location: App)
• Sales (Conversion Location: Website)
• Traffic (Conversion Location: App)
• Traffic (Conversion Location: Messaging Apps)
• Traffic (Conversion Location: Website)

When to use it: You are driving people to a website that you do not control or does not have your pixel installed. Could also be for promoting instant experiences. Significant risk of low-quality clicks that you will need to address.

17. Page Likes

Definition: We’ll try to deliver your ads to the right people to help you get more Page likes at the lowest cost.

Objectives:

• Engagement (Conversion Location: Facebook Page)

When to use it: It’s 2013 and you still get amazing organic reach. Or you’re one of the lucky ones and it’s worth the cost to build your following through ads because your organic audience remains reachable and a profit driver.

18. Reach

Definition: We’ll try to show your ads to as many people as possible.

Objectives:

• Awareness

When to use it: Two opposite scenarios. One is for awareness, typically spending larger budgets and you just want to reach as many people as possible with your ad. The other is to reach as many people within a very small audience as possible with hopes that the mere quality of that group will lead to desired actions. This performance goals also allows you to set a frequency cap.

19. Reminders Set

Definition: We’ll try to show your ads to people more likely to set reminders for your upcoming event.

Objectives:

• Engagement (Conversion Location: On Your Ad, Engagement Type: Reminders Set)

When to use it: You are active on Instagram and you have an event or launch that you want to promote.

20. ThruPlay Views

Definition: We’ll try to show your video ads to people who will watch the entire video when it’s shorter than 15 seconds. For longer videos, we’ll try to show it to people who are likely to watch at least 15 seconds.

Objectives (2 combinations):

• Awareness
• Engagement (Conversion Location: On Your Ad, Engagement Type: Video Views)

When to use it: You want to show your ads to people most likely to watch at least 15 seconds of your video, but you are less concerned about any additional actions they will take. Watch for placements that force ThruPlays, thereby inflating results.

21. Value of Conversions

Definition: We’ll try to show your ads to the people most likely to make higher value purchases.

Objectives (2 combinations):

• App Promotion
• Sales (Conversion Location: Website)

When to use it: You care more about generating higher purchase value and Return on Ad Spend than a high volume of purchases. Best when you have a wide range of purchase prices and you can generate the volume to suffer fewer purchases and remain effective.

Your Turn

How do you approach performance goals?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post 21 Performance Goals: The Focus of Meta Ads Optimization appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

Some advertising mistakes are made due to inaction. Others are made as a result of overthinking and unnecessary tinkering. Both apply to mistakes related to placement selection.

Today’s post continues a theme of common advertising mistakes. Read the prior posts below:

• Common Ad Set Optimization Mistakes Advertisers Make
• 5 Most Common Attribution Mistakes Advertisers Make
• 6 Targeting Mistakes Advertisers Make

When you create an ad set, one of the customizable options is placements. Over the years, Meta has gone out of its way to make manually adjusting placements more difficult, encouraging advertisers to use Advantage+ Placements.

When on, all placements are eligible for distribution, though they won’t be used equally. Whether or not you make changes here is the focus of this post.

Let’s address the mistakes related to placements and provide a path for what you should do instead…

Removing Placements When Optimizing for Conversions

More often than not, the advertisers who are guilty of this infraction have been doing it for years. It’s simply too much effort to remove placements these days that there needs to be some deeply ingrained habit that motivates it.

The practice of removing placements goes back as far as the option has existed. I wrote a blog post in 2013 about how advertisers should stop removing the sidebar placement. It’s so old that it’s not active because too much of it is outdated.

But the concept isn’t. The problem was that advertisers were so focused on the low action rate of sidebar ads — and negative perceptions about how they thought it performed — that they completely ignored the low cost to reach people. The result was a solid Cost Per Action. But advertisers removed it and focused entirely on news feed placements.

It actually makes sense that these advertisers never learned. This overreaction was rarely punished with terrible results because it was so insanely cheap to reach people a decade ago. You want to force the algorithm to show ads to people in the news feeds? It was inefficient and unnecessary, but it still provided results.

Of course, it’s a different landscape now. The ad algorithm is far smarter, adjusting distribution of your ads in real-time to get you the best results. Costs are far higher, and removing placements to focus on the “highest performers” will often lead to poor performance. At the very least, the removal of placements doesn’t actually help you.

There are far more placements available today, so advertisers have more options for sources of dissatisfaction. Common targets are right hand column, Audience Network, and Marketplace.

Audience Network has a negative reputation that’s deserved. It’s notorious for driving low-quality traffic due to accidental clicks, click fraud, and bots (before those nefarious actors are detected). When your ad account gets refunded, it’s almost always due to activity on Audience Network.

So, wait. I just gave a really good reason to remove this placement. Why wouldn’t you?

Keep in mind that the algorithm is always trying to get you as many of your goal events as possible, as defined by your performance goal.

The algorithm will constantly make adjustments to delivery based on its ability to get you that action. If a placement either historically doesn’t lead to that action or isn’t currently, less of your budget will be spent there — if at all.

The concerns with Audience Network are related to low-quality clicks. But, low-quality clicks don’t lead to purchases. They rarely lead to any conversions at all. That’s part of what defines a low-quality click.

If you use Advantage+ Placements and optimize for any type of lead or conversion, you’ll likely see this reflected in delivery. Run a breakdown by placements…

In the example above, the algorithm barely even tried to show lead ads in the Audience Network placements because it wasn’t expected to drive results.

Could you remove it? Sure. But, it’s completely unnecessary. If you always remove it, you may miss an opportunity.

Using Advantage+ Placements for Top of Funnel

This section will sound like a contradiction of what I stated in the section above. But once you understand how this works, it will make sense.

Ad sets that are optimized for top-of-the-funnel actions are notoriously problematic. They consistently provide good surface-level results, but the quality is often very low when put under closer scrutiny.

Why does this happen? It has everything to do with the ad distribution algorithm, and placements are a component.

For the same reason that you shouldn’t remove placements when optimizing for conversions, you should remove then when optimizing for top-of-funnel actions. Let me explain…

Once again, your performance goal will determine how the algorithm distributes your ads. This is what defines success, and Meta will do everything it can to get you as many of that action as possible within your budget.

Instead of conversions, let’s assume that your performance goal is link clicks or landing page views.

Remember when we talked about how Audience Network can lead to low-quality clicks? That wasn’t a concern when optimizing for conversions because low-quality clicks don’t lead to conversions. Well, that’s going to be an important concern now.

The algorithm for ad set optimization and delivery is literal. Its primary focus is getting you as many of that goal action as possible within your budget. You defined it as the action that you want, and the algorithm is going to help you get it.

Because the algorithm is literal, it doesn’t care about what happens next. You might care whether people who click your link do other things after — like read, spend time on your website, or convert. But when your performance goal is link clicks or landing page views, the algorithm doesn’t care it all. It only wants to get you clicks.

So, it will go after people who historically click on things. Maybe they’re serial clickers. Maybe they’re bots who haven’t been detected yet. Maybe they actually are potential customers mixed into the nonsense. But you can bet that the algorithm will go after the cheapest clicks first in order to get you as many as possible.

Once again, that may sound nefarious. To a point, it’s not great. But this same approach is why you benefit from it when optimizing for any type of conversion. You want as many purchases as possible within your budget.

If you’re running a traffic campaign optimized for link clicks or landing page views, removing Audience Network won’t completely solve your problem. The algorithm still doesn’t care about quality. But you can at least eliminate a very likely source of low-quality clicks that the algorithm will surely draw from.

This problem isn’t limited to clicks, unfortunately. Another potential issue is when optimizing for ThruPlays. Once again, an Audience Network placement is the source of quality concerns.

I first stumbled on this problem when optimizing for ThruPlays and I was getting results that were too good to be true. Suspicious results. I was getting more ThruPlays than actual people reached.

Wow, my ad must be amazing! People like it! But, no…

When I performed a breakdown by placement, I spotted the culprit…

The vast majority of impressions were within Audience Network Rewarded Video. How is it possible that the ThruPlay Per Reach was 132.6%? It all makes sense when you understand how the placement works.

From Meta:

Rewarded video ads are a fullscreen experience where users opt-in to view a video ad in exchange for something of value, such as virtual currency, in-app items, exclusive content, and more.

People aren’t watching your video because they find it interesting. They’re watching it because they’re either forced or incentivized to watch it in exchange for something of value, like virtual currency. Audience Network Rewarded Video ads placements are one way that apps monetize themselves.

And since your performance goal indicates that you want ThruPlays, the algorithm doesn’t care how it gets them. It assumes you don’t care either. You might hope that those who watch the video are inspired to take another action, but that’s never a consideration for the algorithm.

The result is likely to be lots of views that go nowhere.

What Should You Do?

This is such a critical piece to understanding how ad set optimization for delivery works. When you understand it, you’ll be much better equipped to leverage it and avoid its pitfalls.

As related to placements, it’s really this simple…

1. Use Advantage+ Placements when optimizing for any type of conversion.

2. Consider removing placements when optimizing for any top-of-funnel action.

I’ve isolated a couple of problematic placements, but that doesn’t mean others aren’t a problem. If you ever get results that seem too good to be true, perform a breakdown by placement. Is a large percentage of impressions happening in certain placements?

That doesn’t mean you remove it. But ask… What is it about this placement that may lead to more of these actions? What is it about this placement that may lead to cheap and low-quality actions?

“More” isn’t necessarily “cheap and low-quality.” In the case of Audience Network, there are specific weaknesses that lead to cheap and low-quality actions. And if you optimize for those specific actions, you’re susceptible to throwing money away.

This is how you protect yourself. But long-term, Meta needs to do something to prevent this. A solution that involves providing an option to optimize for quality top-of-funnel actions would benefit everyone.

Watch Video

I recorded a video about this, too. Watch it below…

Your Turn

How do you manage placement controls when running Meta ads?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post Common Advertising Mistakes Related to Placement Selection appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

The path to successful Meta ads campaigns isn’t always a clear one. And if you struggle to get good results, it’s often because you’re tripped up by a common advertising mistake. Today’s focus: Ad set optimization-related mistakes.

When we talk about ad set optimization, the conversation is around how Meta optimizes to deliver your ads based on critical selections you’ve made in the ad set.

There are two common mistakes that I see advertisers make related to ad set optimization…

1. Confusing Objective for Ad Set Optimization

This is a big one.

Your campaign objective is important. It tells Meta what you’re trying to accomplish, and that selection will impact the options available to you in the ad set. But beyond that, the objective isn’t as powerful as many advertisers think.

By picking the Sales objective, Meta won’t necessarily optimize the delivery of your ads for purchases. The objective is the first step to assuring that happens, but it’s not the final step.

If you want sales and you want Meta to optimize ad delivery to get you sales, you need to do three things:

1. Use the Sales objective
2. Set Conversions as your performance goal
3. Set Purchases as your conversion event

Your performance goal is how Meta determines success — and the factor that drives changes to ad delivery.

When using the Sales objective, you have several options when selecting a performance goal…

Don’t overlook how Meta defines each of these options.

Maximize number of conversions: We’ll try to show your ads to the people most likely to take a specific action on your website.

Maximize value of conversions: We’ll try to show your ads to the people most likely to make higher value purchases.

Maximize number of landing page views: We’ll try to show your ads to the people most likely to view the website or Instant Experience linked in your ad.

Maximize number of link clicks: We’ll try to show your ads to the people most likely to click on them.

Maximize daily unique reach: We’ll try to show your ads to people up to once per day.

Maximize number of impressions: We’ll try to show your ads to people as many times as possible.

Even though Sales is your objective, you don’t have to select a value-based conversion event (like “purchases”) when you “Maximize number of conversions.” You could select an event like Search instead, which isn’t value-based.

Notice how the bottom four options don’t make any mention of conversions or purchases? That’s not a mistake. In fact, let’s change the objective to Traffic and see if these options change.

Other than adding an option for Conversations (nope, not “conversions”), the performance goals for landing page views, link clicks, daily unique reach, and impressions are defined exactly the same.

Your objective matters to a point. But don’t make the mistake of assuming that it determines how your ads will be delivered. If your performance goal is to maximize number of landing page views, it doesn’t matter whether your objective is Sales, Traffic, or one of the other objectives where landing page views is available as an option.

Some advertisers believe that by selecting the Sales objective with a landing page views performance goal, the algorithm will prioritize clicks that lead to a purchase. There is no evidence that this is the case.

2. Optimizing for the Wrong Action

A phrase that you will hear and read from me often is this one: Optimization is literal.

I say this to help you understand how Meta optimizes to deliver your ads. The fact that it’s literal is both a benefit and a weakness.

If you optimize for a purchase, the algorithm’s primary focus will be on satisfying that goal. If you aren’t getting purchases, Meta will believe that something is wrong and changes need to be made. This is good!

Now, let’s consider how this can be a problem. Here’s an example where you could be led astray by making assumptions related to how ad traffic will behave…

Instead of optimizing for purchases, you decide to optimize for landing page views. You think this will be a cheap way to get purchases since you know that, historically, 5% of visitors to your landing page convert.

You know that you can get extremely cheap landing page views when that’s your performance goal. You do the math and figure out that if you can maintain a $.20 cost per landing page view, you can drive 100 people by spending only $20. And if your math holds up, you’ll get five purchases!

This is way cheaper than optimizing for a purchase, so you go this route instead. But then a weird thing happens. You don’t get any purchases from that first $20. In fact, out of $100 spent, you still haven’t generated any purchases!

The reason for this is simple: Meta is optimizing ad set delivery to give you the thing that you want. You said that you want landing page views. That’s the only focus — not what the person does after landing on your website.

You may get accidental clicks, people who seemingly click on everything, and a whole bunch of low-quality and irrelevant traffic. But, Meta thinks you’re happy because you didn’t say you wanted these people to do anything else. You just said that you wanted landing page views.

Of course, this is a huge weakness in optimization that Meta needs to address (there should be an option to optimize for quality traffic or engagement), but that’s beside the point. You should optimize for the specific action that you want.

While it’s not always easy to optimize for purchases, particularly when you’re working with lower budgets, you should still prioritize that approach. You may not exit the learning phase, but at least you’ll be aligned with Meta’s ad set optimization about what defines success.

Watch Video

I also recorded a video to walk through this. Watch it below…

Your Turn

These are the two primary mistakes that I see advertisers make related to ad set optimization. Anything you’d add?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post Common Ad Set Optimization Mistakes Advertisers Make appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

We’re entering a new era of ads optimization driven by broad targeting and automation. While this has long-term potential for sales campaigns, there are obvious weaknesses outside of that focus. How does Meta improve optimization to work in all situations?

We also want a solution that is in line with Meta’s current philosophy and campaign creation flow. We can’t add a bunch of manual inputs to improve results when Meta’s entire focus is on streamlining the process. We want to find a realistic solution.

Let’s first review the problem and an example of ads optimization gone wrong. Then I’ll provide a recommended solution…

The Problem

The flaws and weaknesses of Meta ads optimization can be traced to one simple point: The goals of optimization are literal.

What I mean is that Meta’s systems have tunnel vision. When you set your performance goal and (if necessary) conversion event, the algorithm’s primary focus is getting you that thing. This is how you’ve defined success for yourself, so Meta will deliver your ads and make adjustments to satisfy it.

This works great at the very bottom of the funnel. Not only can you optimize for number of purchase events, but you can optimize for the value of those purchases. Meta’s focus will be on satisfying that, which puts the algorithm and Meta on the same page.

This can also work for conversion leads optimization. Meta’s focused on generating quality leads who end up buying from you. That’s what you want, too.

It all goes downhill from there.

If you optimize for link clicks, landing page views, ThruPlays, post engagement, Page likes, or even leads, the advertiser and Meta’s ad optimization will have divergent goals.

Yes, the advertiser wants that initial action. But they want that initial action because they have another ultimate goal. And they’re usually optimizing for that initial action because they don’t have the budget to optimize for that ultimate goal.

But Meta’s optimization doesn’t see it that way. It’s only trying to get you as many of that one action as possible within your budget. There is no concern for quality or what these people will do later.

That’s a problem for ads optimization generally. But it becomes a bigger problem in this world of broad targeting.

Example of Optimization Gone Wrong

This blog post was inspired by a complaint I’ve been hearing a lot lately related to Advantage+ Audience. The situation that keeps coming up is advertisers promoting a brand or product that’s catered to women.

They create a campaign optimized for Post Engagement.

Within Advantage+ Audience, the advertiser defines their target audience by detailed targeting and gender.

Of course, these are only targeting suggestions since we’re using Advantage+ Audience. The algorithm can go beyond these suggestions.

So, just select a gender constraint in Audience Controls, right?

Nope, gender isn’t an option. If Meta believes that more engagement can be found by reaching men, it will show your ads to men.

This is intentional. Meta’s documentation on Advantage+ Audience only mentions the ability to exclude ages or locations.

You can imagine how this could lead to disastrous results for a brand focused on women. The inability to exclude men should be fine when optimizing for purchases. If men don’t purchase, the algorithm learns and doesn’t show to men. But you can imagine that men will engage with ads featuring women. And unfortunately, it will be some of the creepiest engagement.

Meta’s ads optimization doesn’t care whether it’s creepy engagement. It only cares that there’s engagement. And that means that this ad will be shown to more men.

The Solution: Ranking Actions

We need Meta’s optimization goals to be in line with our long-term advertising goals. How do we fix this?

The easy solution to the problem above may be to allow the exclusion of men in Audience Controls. But that’s only a Band-Aid that doesn’t solve the underlying problem.

Meta’s optimization needs to have a foundational understanding of what we want. Yes, we want engagement. But we want engagement from relevant people who could potentially become paying customers.

There needs to be a reworking of the algorithm. To do that, we can rank what’s most important to us.

For example, our performance goal may be Post Engagement, but our ultimate goal is a purchase. And if not a purchase, a lead. So, Meta’s optimization will prioritize engagement that eventually results in a purchase or lead.

How do we do that? Well, having the advertiser rank their priority events in the ad set would never fly. This conflicts with Meta’s desire to simplify campaign creation.

Maybe this could be an addition to Ad Account Settings. We’ve already seen this for account-wide exclusions related to Advantage+ Shopping and manual sales campaigns (Customer Acquisition). It wouldn’t be crazy to allow advertisers to prioritize events there.

But, this is also something that is mostly universal. Meta’s ads algorithm should be smart enough to prioritize this for us. This ranking should apply for most advertisers:

1. High-Value Purchase
2. Any Purchase
3. Conversion Lead
4. Any Lead or Registration
5. Deep website engagement (time spent, return visits, events fired)
6. Deep page engagement (long-time follower, quality DMs that aren’t reported or ignored)
7. Deep post engagement (watch videos to completion, share posts, prioritized reactions like Love, quality comments that aren’t marked spam)
8. All other light-touch engagement (clicks, reactions, views)

To clarify, this will act as a foundational ranking for helping the algorithm learn. Even if your performance goal is Post Engagement, it will focus on satisfying that goal. But the optimization will prioritize engagement that comes from people who have or will eventually perform these other actions (greater weight added based on order).

Not all post engagement is created equal. That’s obvious. We just need Meta’s ads optimization to understand that, too.

The Only Other Direction

This is something that must be fixed. Yes, optimizing for top-of-the-funnel has always been a questionable strategy, but it becomes completely worthless when the push is to go broad. Unless Meta’s optimization gets smarter about what quality engagement looks like, there’s only one other option.

If Meta can’t fix it, then eliminate it. Advertisers are burning money, and many don’t realize they’re doing it. The only other direction that makes sense is to only allow for conversion optimization. Because this is the only time when the new brand of Meta advertising makes sense.

Your Turn

Maybe this is a pipe dream, but these are critical issues that can be addressed and it would drastically improve advertising results. What do you think?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post How Meta Could Improve Ads Optimization appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

There are four factors that, if you consistently prioritize them and get them right, will lead to high-performing Meta ads. If you run an agency or manage ads for others, invest in these primary areas.

First, allow me to state the obvious: There are limitless factors that impact the performance of your ads. I’m not saying that these are the only things that matter and you can ignore everything else.

But these things are easily the most impactful. I’m confident saying that if you aren’t getting the results you want, it’s likely due to a combination of these factors.

I should also be clear about what I mean by “performance.” Your ads didn’t just appear to perform well. You didn’t just get a great CTR or other surface-level result. Your ads performed well in a substantive and measurable way.

Let’s get to it…

1. Performance Goal

The Performance Goal is determined in the ad set and has the most impact on how your ads are delivered.

Don’t overcomplicate this. The Performance Goal is exactly what it sounds like. This is the action that you want. This is how you measure success. It is also how Meta measures success and the metric that is prioritized for optimizing delivery.

The algorithm is literal. Meta will do everything it can to get you as many of that action as possible at the lowest price. That means showing your ad to the people most likely to perform that event.

The Performance Goal is why broad targeting is possible. The algorithm knows the action you want and can then search out the people most likely to perform that action.

Meta will find ways to get you those actions, even if it means taking advantage of weaknesses in placements that can inflate your results. Setting a Performance Goal that is a surface-level action will guarantee you’ll get lots of those actions. But you may not get conversions.

When possible, you should optimize for some type of conversion. You can even adjust the quality of conversion Meta optimizes for and you get.

You can optimize for number of purchases or value of purchases.

You can optimize for any leads or conversion leads.

There isn’t one “right” Performance Goal you should use in all cases. But this one step is possibly the most critical.

2. Attribution

In the simplest form, attribution is the ability to give credit to an ad for a conversion. Here are examples of when that is important…

Have you properly set up events?

You have the Meta pixel on your website. You’ve set up standard and custom events to track the most important actions. You’re also passing first-party data via the Conversions API. If you take any shortcuts, the ability to measure the impact of your ads will be limited.

Can you interpret results?

This is under appreciated. Do you take the results at face value? Or do you compare attribution settings to see how many conversions fell within each window to better evaluate those numbers?

Is attribution complete and accurate for optimization?

Incomplete attribution doesn’t only impact reporting. It’s important for Meta to know that engagement with an ad led to a conversion for the purpose of optimization because Meta learns from and makes adjustments based on results.

Attribution could be deflated or inflated if set up incorrectly. That will impact how your ads are delivered.

3. Copy and Creative

Let’s assume that you nailed the Performance Goal and attribution. You did everything right, but your ads are still bombing. What’s the most likely explanation?

Especially these days, it’s copy and creative. Your ads need to be designed in a way that appeal to your target audience. They should invite the action that you want. The right Performance Goal won’t guarantee that.

You need to test different formats (video, static image, carousel, Instant Experience), language, primary text, headlines, and CTA buttons. You can test several at once using Dynamic Creative, Flexible Formats, or Advantage+ Creative.

There isn’t one right way to get the ad copy and creative right. It’s the most variable and difficult to pin down. But they can be the reason your ads failed.

4. Budget

I went back and forth on whether to include the budget, but I don’t think we can ignore its importance.

I’m not saying that you can’t have success with lower budgets. I’m also not saying that higher budgets will guarantee good results. But this is absolutely a factor.

In order to get optimal results, your ads should exit the Learning Phase. To do that, you’ll need to generate about 50 conversion events (your Performance Goal) in a week. If your budget is too low, that may not be possible.

You may still get acceptable results with that lower budget, even if you are unable to exit the Learning Phase. But you’re unlikely to get optimal results without spending more.

And because of that, advertisers often feel forced to adjust their Performance Goal when selling a product. You may use link clicks, landing page views, or a conversion event that’s further up the funnel.

These approaches aren’t guaranteed to fail, but they are much less likely to succeed than if you could spend the budget to optimize for purchases.

Prioritize These Optimizations

You may not be able to do anything about your budget, but you can understand how it impacts performance. Otherwise, a strategy that prioritizes all of these items will give your ads the best chance of success.

1. When possible, set the Performance Goal that accurately reflects the action that you want. If you choose something else, know the risks involved.

2. Make sure that Meta has an accurate and complete picture of attribution by properly and thoroughly setting up the Meta pixel, Conversions API, and events. Know how to evaluate the resultant data.

3. Invest in copywriters and creative resources to help generate ads that will give you the best opportunity for success.

Do these things, and you will consistently outperform those who deprioritize them.

Your Turn

Do you prioritize these four factors in your advertising strategies?

Let me know in the comments below.

The post 4 Most Important Factors That Impact Meta Ads Performance appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

Meta ads placements have been a moving target over the years. What the placements are and when you should use them are constantly evolving. How we approached placements five years ago is not the same as how we should approach them now.

In this post, we’ll cover the following:

1. What the current Meta ads placements are
2. Differences, strengths, and weaknesses
3. When to use Advantage+ Placements
4. When to manually select placements
5. Viewing results by placement

Some good stuff here. Let’s go…

Current Placements

In case a definition is necessary, placements are where your Meta ads might appear when displayed in front of your target audience. The classic example is in your mobile Facebook news feed.

Placements are selected within the ad set. By default, you’ll use Advantage+ Placements, which means that Meta has the ability to use any placement when distributing your ads. We’ll get to that later.

You have the ability to control whether ads are shown on mobile or desktop (all devices by default).

You can also select specific mobile devices and operating systems when expanding options at the bottom of placements.

You can choose to control which platforms your ads appear on (Facebook, Instagram, Audience Network, and Messenger). All are selected by default.

From there, placements are broken into six different categories. Each of these categories have different display rules based on format, dimensions, and character counts.

1. Feeds.

The feeds are generally seen as the most desirable real estate for our ads. They are often where there is the most activity. But this will also be where we find the most competition.

Feeds include:

• Facebook feed
• Instagram feed
• Instagram profile feed
• Facebook Marketplace
• Facebook video feeds
• Facebook right column
• Instagram Explore
• Instagram Explore home
• Messenger inbox
• Facebook Business Explore

2. Stories and Reels.

These are your 9:16, or vertical, formats. This includes Instagram Stories, Facebook Stories, Messenger Stories, Instagram Reels, and Facebook Reels.

3. In-Stream Ads for Videos and Reels.

This includes Facebook in-stream videos, Ads on Facebook Reels, and Ads on Instagram Reels. The difference with these two “Reels” ads compared to the Reels ads in #2 above is that these ads appear on top of an existing Reel. In the other case, your video ad would appear as a Reel.

4. Search Results.

Your ads can appear within both Facebook Search Results and Instagram Search Results.

5. Messages.

This placement will only be selected when running Messenger Sponsored Messages.

6. Apps and Sites.

These are the placements that exist away from the Meta family of apps. Otherwise known as Audience Network (Audience Network native, banner and interstitial; Audience Network rewarded videos; and Audience Network in-stream videos), these apps and sites monetize themselves by showing Meta ads.

Keep in mind that Meta ads placements are constantly evolving. More will be added, and some will go away. Keep that in mind if you see something different.

Differences, Strengths, and Weaknesses

Every placement is unique. The people who use Facebook are not the same as the people who use Instagram. Some placements require square images, some tall, and some wide. In some cases, you’re required to use a static image and in others, you need a video. The text you provide in your ads will be displayed differently, truncated, or not displayed at all, depending on the placement.

Every placement will also perform differently. People may be more likely to respond to an ad in their news feed than in their Messenger. Some placements are largely ignored. But due to these performance and competition differences, your costs to reach people will vary by placement as well.

You should also be aware that some placements are more susceptible than others to accidental clicks, click fraud, and bots. Additionally, your ads may be forced on people in some cases, while it’s an intentional choice to engage in others.

You shouldn’t obsess over these differences, but you should be aware of them.

When to Use Advantage+ Placements

When you read about the various weaknesses of placements, you may be inclined to only select the highest-performing ones. Truthfully, that’s how we did things back in the day. But in some cases, you absolutely shouldn’t do it now.

Advantage+ Placements is the default selection that gives Meta the ability to distribute your ads to any of the eligible placements.

When you select Advantage+ Placements, Meta will use historical data and knowledge of how your potential audience behaves to show your ads to the right people at the right time.

Understand that the goal isn’t to only show your ads in the highest-performing, and most expensive, placements. Meta’s goal is to get you as many of your desired actions (determined by your performance goal) as possible within your budget.

With all of that said, there’s one primary time when you should always use Advantage+ Placements: When your performance goal is a purchase. Meta will constantly learn from your results and make adjustments to get you the most purchases within your budget.

In other words, the weaknesses of some placements (low-quality clicks and engagement) shouldn’t be an issue here. If clicks and engagement from a placement aren’t leading to purchases, the algorithm will adjust.

As long as there is no risk for placements resulting in low-quality actions — the same kind of action Meta will optimize for — there is no reason to manually remove placements. You should consider Advantage+ Placements for any type of conversion. Only make a change if you see that a placement is resulting in low-quality conversions.

Make sure to read my Guide to Meta Ads Optimization for Delivery to better understand how weaknesses in placements impact the distribution of your ads.

When to Use Manual Placements

The most notorious placement group for low-quality actions is Audience Network. You’ll recall that this is the group of placements that exist on third-party apps that use those placements to monetize themselves.

This is why Audience Network is susceptible to click fraud. If you ever receive a refund from Meta, it’s almost always because of detected click fraud from Audience Network.

But Audience Network is also susceptible to accidental clicks and bots. This could potentially lead to lots of low-quality traffic, especially if you are optimizing for link clicks or landing page views.

Even Audience Network Rewarded Video has the potential for problems, simply because of the nature of the placement. This is when an app provides video ads for users to watch in exchange for something of value, like virtual currency, that can be used in the app. Users are forced or incentivized to watch the video. This can lead to inflated numbers and make you believe that people are more interested in your video than they are.

Bottom line is that you should manually remove placements when inherent weaknesses lead to lots of low-quality actions that would fulfill your performance goal. These would confuse Meta’s ad distribution algorithm.

If you optimize for link clicks or landing page views, you should remove Audience Network. If you don’t, you can expect much of your budget to get spent there. You should also expect to get lots of cheap, low-quality traffic from that placement. More than likely, that traffic won’t do anything once they get to your website.

When you optimize for ThruPlay, you should consider removing Audience Network Rewarded Video. Otherwise, most of your ads will be shown there because people will be forced to watch at least 15 seconds of your video — resulting in ThruPlays. Maybe you’re okay with forced views. But keep in mind it’s unlikely to lead to another desired action.

Another time you might remove placements is when optimizing for Reach. In that case, you will use a frequency cap and may want to get a message in front of a specific group. But since the algorithm’s only goal will be reaching as many people as possible within your budget, Meta will focus on the cheapest placements. If you want action, you may want to focus on the feeds here. Just know that it will increase your costs.

You may be inclined to remove a placement simply because it doesn’t lead to many results. Beyond the example of optimizing for Reach, this is not a great reason to remove it. The feeds are likely to lead to the most results, but they’re also the most competitive and expensive. If you remove every other placement from the algorithm’s options, expect your costs to go up.

The right-hand column placement on desktop is the classic example. It’s an under appreciated placement because it doesn’t lead to lots of results. But it also is one of the cheapest placements. Views from that placement may help lead to a conversion even if people aren’t clicking directly on ads there.

If you’re going to remove a placement, make sure that you have a very good reason for doing so. Otherwise, you’ll likely only increase your costs.

View Results by Placement

Not sure how to view performance by placement? Let me show you…

Click the Breakdown dropdown menu. Then type “Placement” in the search bar. Then select Placement.

You could also scroll to the bottom of the Breakdown dropdown menu and find Placement within Delivery.

A separate row will then be generated for each placement that was used for your campaign during the selected period of time.

To spot a problem, look for a situation where a high percentage of your budget is spent on a placement. This is usually because it’s performing “well,” but results that are often too good to be true for a reason (see Audience Network).

Again, don’t use this to find low-performing placements so that you can remove them. Those placements were used for a reason, and the algorithm will adjust in real-time.

Watch Video

I recorded a video about when to select Advantage+ Placements, too…

Your Turn

What strategy do you take with Meta ads placements?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post A Guide to Meta Ads Placements appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

The Meta ads algorithm is powerful. It learns, tweaks, and optimizes in real-time to get you the most results as efficiently as possible. But it’s critical that you understand how Meta ads optimization for delivery works.

If you go into this blindly, you will be misled by results. You will get results that seem too good to be true (because they are). You will be frustrated. And you may even give up on Meta advertising because of it.

But once you understand exactly how Meta ads optimization works, you’ll have a better sense of its strengths and weaknesses. You will be better equipped to mitigate those weaknesses to leverage what makes it so powerful.

This is an important post. Let’s go…

How Optimization Works

The first and most important step of Meta ads optimization is selecting a performance goal in the ad set.

Advertisers often misunderstand that the campaign objective determines optimization. The objective’s only impact is on the options available when selecting your performance goal.

In the example above, Maximum Number of Conversions is selected. Meta will search for the best opportunities to achieve that goal.

In this case, the advertiser also defines the conversion event they want to prioritize. Here, it’s a purchase.

Finally, since we’re using the Highest Volume bid strategy (which is selected by default), Meta will attempt to generate the most conversions (purchases in this case) while spending our entire budget.

To understand how Meta ads optimization for delivery works, you must understand the contribution of these things. Meta’s entire focus is on getting you the results that you want. You tell Meta what you want with these settings.

Meta will adjust delivery in real-time to attempt to accomplish these goals. The people you reach, the placements your ads are shown, and the formats and ads that are displayed are all evolving as Meta learns from the results. This delivery is driven entirely by your performance goal.

To drill this home further, the ways Meta optimizes will be different depending on whether you’re optimizing for purchases, link clicks, ThruPlays, leads, or something else. You could provide the same targeting, placements, and ads in each case, but Meta will deliver your ads differently to make sure you get the actions you want.

Weaknesses

The strengths and weaknesses of Meta ads optimization are closely tied together. What makes it powerful can also be problematic in certain circumstances.

Understand that the ads delivery algorithm is literal. If you tell Meta that you have a certain performance goal, the algorithm will do everything it can to get you the thing that you want. Nothing else will matter (later, you’ll see why this can be an issue).

This can especially be an issue for top-of-the-funnel actions. But truthfully, it applies to almost every performance goal (minus a couple of exceptions we’ll get to later).

In order to satisfy your goals, Meta will be focused on volume and costs. The algorithm will exploit the cheapest ways to get you these actions.

Weakness #1: Countries.

Weakness #2: Placements.

Weakness #3: Erratic behavior.

Weakness #4: Attribution setting.

Always think about the ways that your results can be inflated based on your performance goal. All of these examples can lead to low-quality results.

Organic and Ad-Driven Behavior

The weaknesses of optimization are weaknesses for one simple reason: Organic and ad-driven actions are not the same thing. We should not expect both groups to act the same way.

For example, you may have a 5% conversion rate to a certain landing page from organic traffic. Of the 100 people who visit there, five will buy from you.

You may assume that if you optimize for link clicks or landing page views, you can send 100 people to that page with an ad and maintain that 5% conversion rate. You will not. In fact, you probably won’t get any purchases.

Advertisers are often tempted to optimize for top-of-the-funnel actions because they assume that these actions have greater meaning than they actually do. They assume that if someone clicks your link, they’re as likely as the typical user to convert. They assume that if someone watches a video, they are actually interested in what they are watching.

You must remember a simple fact: When Meta optimizes the delivery of your ads, the only concern is generating the action you have prioritized (your performance goal). The algorithm does not care whether these people do anything else beyond that one action.

You, of course, do care.

Strengths

Up until now, this post seems like an indictment of Meta ads optimization. It’s not. It could be better, but it’s actually incredibly powerful.

It’s especially useful when the algorithm can’t be distracted by cheap actions. The best example: Purchases.

For all of the same reasons that it can be problematic that Meta does all it can to generate cheap actions for the top-of-the-funnel, it’s powerful when optimizing for a purchase. Meta’s singular goal is to get you as many purchases as possible within your budget.

Placements can’t be exploited for accidental purchases (unlike accidental clicks). Meta can’t go after low-quality purchases (unlike low-quality leads). And if you want to generate a higher ROAS, you can even optimize for Value so that the algorithm focuses on people who will spend the most money on your website.

If a placement isn’t resulting in purchases, the algorithm adjusts. If people aren’t buying after clicking on one of the ads, the algorithm is tweaked. If people in a country are clicking but not buying while people in another country do, the algorithm will move your budget.

Meta has all the data in the world to tweak and optimize in real-time to place your ads efficiently and give you the best opportunities to get the most of the action that you want. If you want purchases, the algorithm won’t mislead you.

How to Mitigate Weaknesses

Once you understand the weaknesses of optimization, you can do your best to mitigate many of them and limit the damage. Here are a few steps that you can take:

1. Optimize for the action you want.

2. Avoid top-of-the-funnel optimization if you can.

3. Approach countries carefully.

4. Adjust placements depending on optimization.

5. Adjust the attribution setting where necessary.

An example is if you optimize for custom events, like I do, for an action like a 1-minute page view. This is something that is bound to happen over and over, especially for loyal visitors. If 1-day view is an option, the algorithm could inflate the numbers by simply displaying ads to people who are likely to visit my website that day anyway. While displaying ads to loyal visitors for most conversions would be preferred, this would lead to a gross misrepresentation of results.

What Meta Could Do

There’s a separate philosophical discussion about what Meta could or should do to prevent many of these issues. Top-of-the-funnel optimization is problematic, but it doesn’t have to be.

A couple of things Meta could do:

1. Provide more options for quality optimization.

There’s no reason why Meta can’t provide an option to optimize for higher-quality actions, knowing that the costs could go up. It’s a trade-off advertisers would gladly take.

2. Provide a secondary performance goal.

What if advertisers could provide a secondary performance goal as a quality check? You can’t optimize for purchases because you don’t get enough volume to exit learning. But it could be the way that Meta decides whether the add to cart optimization is working.

There are surely other steps Meta could take as well. Truthfully, they’re unlikely to happen. Meta’s focus is primarily on e-commerce, which is what makes them the most money.

Watch Video

I recorded a video about the issues with optimization, too…

Your Turn

How do you approach Meta ads optimization?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post A Guide to Meta Ads Optimization for Delivery appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

If you are to find success with Meta ads, you won’t do so blindly. You must understand the role of the Meta ads algorithm and generally how it works.

This isn’t about manipulating the algorithm, taking advantage of unique algorithmic preferences for your gain. Chasing the algorithm is a fool’s errand. You’ll find yourself repeatedly trying to please something that is constantly changing while ignoring what’s most important: Valuable ad content.

Instead, this is about a general understanding of what the Meta ads algorithm is trying to do, and the strengths and weaknesses that result. Once you understand this, you will have a better understanding of what you should and shouldn’t be doing with your ads.

Let’s go…

The Unknown Formula

First, this post isn’t going to unveil the secret formula of the Meta ads algorithm. While bits and pieces of it have been discussed over the years, we don’t know the actual recipe.

And even if we did know the individual ingredients, there are far too many moving parts to obsess over it. How it works is reliant on how users — and your ideal audience — are consuming conten. Meta, too, can tweak it at any moment.

So, no, this isn’t going to be revelatory. And truthfully, revealing the secret of the Meta ads formula would likely result in only temporary benefits.

Once again, if you’re chasing an algorithm, you are deprioritizing effective copy and creative in favor of what you think Meta wants. Don’t do that.

The Basics

It’s important that you understand the basics of how the Meta ads algorithm works.

First, your ads are delivered via an ads auction. You are competing with other advertisers to reach your ideal audience. The better ad or higher bid — or combination thereof — will win that auction. Ideally, you’ll win it with better copy and creative while spending less.

Beyond that, the main thing to understand is that the algorithm has a singular goal: Get you as many of your desired actions possible at the lowest cost (or highest value or at the highest ROAS, depending on your optimization).

The Meta ads algorithm will adjust in realtime to accomplish this, distributing your budget to different people or placements. Don’t forget this. Each time you remove a placement or limit the targeting, you are restricting the options that the algorithm has.

The algorithm is constantly learning from your results and making changes as necessary to continue getting you those results. That’s why it needs volume of results to learn from, otherwise learning will be limited.

The Strengths

The Meta ads algorithm is its strongest when optimizing for a conversion — especially a purchase.

As described above, the way your ads are distributed is fluid. The algorithm will constantly update in an attempt to get the event you told it that you want (in this case purchases).

If you want purchases, optimize for purchases. That way, you and the Meta ads algorithm are on the same page about what it is that will make your ad set successful. If you choose something else while wanting purchases, the algorithm can be led astray.

Of course, there may be some exceptions, particularly in the case that you are unable to get the necessary volume of purchases for the algorithm to learn and adjust. But when possible, optimize for purchases when you want purchases.

The Weaknesses

The biggest weaknesses of the Meta ads algorithm happen at the top of the funnel. The most glaring results I’ve seen are related to link clicks, landing page views, and ThruPlays. Let’s discuss why these weaknesses are possible.

If you optimize for purchases, Meta will try to find you purchases. That’s good. While some purchases can certainly be higher value than others, there aren’t weaknesses in the algorithm that will lead to low-quality purchases or accidental purchases. And if you want higher value, you can actually optimize for that, too.

The most common issue is related to the desire to drive traffic to a website, rather than get conversions. In that case, you’ll optimize for either landing page views or link clicks.

This sounds like a reasonable thing to do. But the problem is that you don’t just want link clicks and landing page views. You expect that some of these people will actually stick around and do other things — maybe even purchase — on your website.

But because the algorithm is literal and has a singular goal of getting you that one thing, it doesn’t care what those people do after clicking. And the weakness is that one placement in particular is prone to accidental clicks, click fraud, and bots. That placement: Audience Network.

The result is the algorithm is trying to make you happy with lots of link clicks and landing page views, so it starts sending more and more budget to Audience Network. It thinks you’ll be happy. You may be temporarily until you see these were empty clicks.

The same might be said of Audience Network Rewarded Video when optimizing for ThruPlays. Since app users are rewarded for watching videos to completion, you’ll get lots of people watching your entire video (or at least 15 seconds). The assumption is that that means they are engaged. But in most cases, they are simply waiting to get something from the app.

What Should You Do?

You’ll be forgiven if you are a new advertiser and aren’t aware of these strengths and weaknesses. But once you are, it starts to shape how you should approach your advertising.

1. When optimizing for conversions.

Avoid restricting the algorithm. Low-quality conversions aren’t an issue caused by the algorithm itself. If you get low-quality leads, that usually has more to do with your ad or form. If you get low-value purchases, you can optimize for Value or set a Minimum ROAS.

Utilize Advantage+ Placements.

If a placement isn’t resulting in conversions, the algorithm will adjust how your budget is distributed. If you limit the placements to only those you believe are high performers, restricting the algorithm can drive up your costs.

You should also avoid small audiences for multiple reasons. First, you’re unlikely to get a high volume of purchases with a small audience. Second, your audience will be expanded by default anyway when optimizing for a conversion due to Advantage Detailed Targeting and Advantage Lookalikes.

You should try going broad. You may find that the algorithm is so smart that you’ll reach many of the same people in your custom audiences anyway.

2. When optimizing for top of funnel actions.

This is where you need to be careful. Because of the literal nature of the algorithm, you need to prevent it from sending you low-quality results. It’s important that you understand the weaknesses.

If you optimize for link clicks or landing page views, remove Audience Network. Maybe you’ll have one of the rare experiences when you achieve miraculous high-quality traffic, but don’t count on it.

If you optimize for ThruPlay, remove Audience Network Rewarded Video. There are other placements to watch out for here as well. If you’re seeing that a too-good-to-be-true percentage of your impressions (like close to 100%) result in a ThruPlay, it’s likely too good to be true.

And honestly, even when you make these adjustments, optimizing for anything top of the funnel can be problematic. Even if you restrict placements or the targeted audience, it doesn’t change the goal of the algorithm. It only wants to get you that surface level action, with no concern whatsoever with what they do next.

If you care about what they do next, consider optimizing for something further down the funnel. Or at least experiment with it. Something I’ve done in the past is optimize for deeper website traffic engagement actions based on things like the amount of scroll depth or time spent on a page. That way, the algorithm has a goal that goals beyond the click.

Watch Video

I recorded a video about this, too. Check it out below…

Your Turn

How well do you understand the Meta ads algorithm?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post Understand the Meta Ads Algorithm appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

There is a common mistake made by Meta advertisers related to conversion rate and an attempt to scale ads. You can be better. Let’s make sure that you don’t make the same mistake.

Maybe this is you. There’s a temptation to try to outsmart the algorithm. But it’s unlikely to work…

Conversion Rate and Opportunity

Like any good marketer, you pay attention to your website metrics with Google Analytics. You are always looking for ways to optimize and improve performance. How can you leverage this information?

You notice that you have a 10-percent conversion rate on a particular product landing page. It’s the perfect combination of a good product, offer, and purchase flow.

You want to improve revenue. One way to do that would be to improve traffic to this high-performing product page.

The Mistake

You come up with an idea. You feel super smart and can’t believe you hadn’t thought of it before.

You know how to drive traffic with Facebook ads. You can do it very cheaply. This is the perfect way to scale.

If you send 100 people, you can expect 10 to convert. If you send 1,000 people, 100 will convert. What about a million?

This can all work because you did such a great job with your product landing page. All you need to do is send the traffic. The landing page will do the rest.

So, you set up a campaign with the primary goal of sending the most traffic possible at the lowest cost. You run a Traffic campaign that is optimized for Link Clicks or Landing Page Views.

Now, you sit back and wait for the profit to roll in…

The Results

That campaign sends a ton of traffic. And yet, no conversions. Nothing.

You wait a while longer. You spend $100. Then $1,000. You’ve sent thousands of people to that amazing product landing page. You might get a sale or two, but that’s it.

Something is wrong. People are clicking on your ad, so they are clearly interested in your product. But virtually no one is buying.

What happened to that amazing conversion rate? What was once 10 percent is now well under 1 percent. You went into this excited about the prospects of big profits and you’ve actually lost money.

You are angry with Meta. There’s no reason that this should happen. It doesn’t make sense.

What Went Wrong?

It’s simple, really: You tried to outsmart the algorithm.

You made assumptions, and that is never a good idea. You assumed that the traffic that appears in Google Analytics is the same as the traffic that you could send with a Facebook ad optimized for clicks.

You assumed that if people clicked your ad, they must be interested in your product. And since the landing page is effective, a predictable percentage of that traffic should result in sales.

But that’s not what happens when you optimize for Link Clicks or Landing Page Views. You’ve learned an important lesson: Not all clicks are created equal.

It’s quite possible that the 10 percent conversion rate reflects organic traffic. The people who made their way to this landing page did so on their own. Your links, emails, and marketing messages helped. But it wasn’t algorithmic.

Meta’s ad algorithm had only one concern when you created your ad set optimized for Link Clicks or Landing Page Views: Get Link Clicks or Landing Page Views at the lowest cost.

Nothing else. No concern about what those people do after landing on your website. It doesn’t matter.

So, the algorithm will find advantages — even weaknesses — in the system to find you cheap clicks. It could be people who just click everything. It could be accidental clicks due to the placement. It might even be click fraud that hasn’t yet been flagged by the system.

But that traffic will not be nearly as good as what you normally get.

What You Should Do

Don’t overcomplicate this. If you want to increase purchases with your ads, run a Sales campaign that is optimized for purchases.

The reason is simple: The algorithm will distribute your ads and make adjustments to delivery based on how well you achieve that goal.

If you optimize for Link Clicks or Landing Page Views, the algorithm will focus on that. If you optimize for Purchases, the algorithm won’t be happy unless you’re getting sales.

Of course, you’re going to see that surface-level metrics may look nicer when optimizing for the click. You’ll get sky-high Click-Through Rates and lowest-of-the-low Cost Per Clicks. You will need to spend more to get clicks when optimizing for conversions, and that can be misleading.

You need to remember that the 10 percent Conversion Rate (or whatever that rate may be) is not in a vacuum. That rate will not hold, regardless of the traffic that you send. It would be nice, of course, but that’s not reality.

If you are unable to optimize for a Purchase, work your way back through the funnel from there. Try Initiate Checkout, Add to Cart, or even a custom event for a Quality Visitor. But the last resort should be be Link Clicks or Landing Page Views.

Even then, you’re likely burning money.

Watch Video

I recorded a video about this, too. Watch it below…

Your Turn

What have been your experiences with the expected Conversion Rates with Meta advertising?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post Do Not Make This Mistake with Conversion Rate and Meta Ads appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

You’ve likely heard the advice, whether from a Facebook ads rep or your regular ads “guru.” Micro-targeting with Facebook ads is no longer viable. You should go broad instead.

As someone who embraced targeting the smallest, most relevant audiences for years, coming around to this approach hasn’t been easy. But it has some merit. It can be the best approach in the right situation. It shouldn’t, however, be used universally in all cases.

Should you go broad with Facebook ads targeting? It depends. Let’s break this down…

What Broad Targeting Looks Like

Let’s be clear, I’m not just talking about targeting a large audience. When I saw “Go Broad,” I’m referring to the practice of using an audience that includes everyone within a given country.

No adjustments made to narrow your audience. No custom audiences, no lookalike audiences, and no interests or behaviors.

If you’ve been advertising for a long time like I have, the thought of this may make you twitch a little. It seems crazy. But, it may just be crazy enough to work.

How Optimization Works

To understand why going broad could work, you must first understand how optimization works.

You choose the optimization event within the ad set.

It could be a conversion, link click, app install, or something else. You provide a target audience. Facebook will then show your ad to people within your audience who are most likely to convert.

The audience is a guardrail. You will never reach everyone in that audience, and you should rarely want that. Facebook’s algorithm is smart and will avoid those least likely to convert while focusing on those with the greatest odds to perform that desired action. The goal is to get you the most optimization events at the lowest cost.

Of course, optimization has some weaknesses. But when it works well, it’s powerful. And it can learn and react much faster — and more intelligently — than we can make changes manually.

How Going Broad Works

The purpose of targeting is to give Facebook the pool of people who are most likely to act on your ad. The algorithm then finds the people within that group to perform that action.

But, when you pick the targeting yourself, the algorithm is limited by your selection. Maybe the people within your selected audience aren’t actually that likely to convert. You are hindering your own success (in theory).

The benefit of going broad is that you are giving Facebook the entire universe of people (not literally, I guess) as an option. The algorithm then goes to work from there.

Machine learning quickly figures out which people are making the action you want and makes real-time adjustments to who sees your ad, in what placement, and (in some cases) in what format.

For this to work, the key is that the algorithm has to learn quickly and effectively in order to find the actions you want. It may start out slowly, but your results should improve with time as the system learns.

This is also reliant on sufficient volume to learn. That may require more budget to get that volume. Ultimately, you will need to get at least 25-50 optimized actions per week per ad set to get optimal results (The Learning Phase).

It’s the Direction Facebook is Heading

If you’ve followed the changes that have rolled out to Ads Manager the past couple of years, you should understand that this is the direction we’re heading — whether we like it or not.

Facebook has rolled out the following “Advantage” features during the past year:

Advantage Detailed Targeting: Allows Facebook to expand your audience beyond the detailed targeting (interests and behaviors) you’ve selected.

Advantage Lookalikes: Allows Facebook to expand your lookalike audience beyond the percentage you used.

Advantage Custom Audiences: Allows Facebook to expand beyond the custom audience you entered for targeting.

In each case, your audience can be expanded beyond what you entered if Facebook believes that more or better results are possible.

In the cases of Advantage Detailed Targeting and Advantage Lookalikes, you can’t turn this off when running conversions campaigns. Your audience can be expanded and you can’t prevent it.

In other words, Facebook really wants you to go broad(er), and in some cases, we don’t have any choice.

Going Broad and Conversions Campaigns

As it is, we know that if you’re optimizing for a conversion, Facebook will have the ability to go broad with the Advantage audience expansion products. But the question is, should you want to go as broad as you can?

I contend that this specific situation — when you optimize for a conversion (especially a purchase) — is when you try it.

Facebook machine learning is currently best suited for conversions campaigns. The system’s only goal is to get you more conversions. You won’t get “low quallity conversions.” The problem with optimization comes about when you want something other than conversions. In that case, you can end up with low-quality (but cheap) actions.

But if you allow the algorithm to hunt for conversions, it can do amazing things. I encourage you to experiment with this as a user. Click on an ad for something like shoes. I use this example often because I’ve experienced it. I clicked an ad for a casual, nicer shoe. Not a tennis shoe. Not a dress shoe. I then started seeing ad after ad for similar STYLED shoes in my feed. Not from the same advertiser or same brand. The same style.

Super smart.

This is possible because Facebook has a crazy amount of data on their users based on their activity within the app, and even outside of it due to the pixel. Your actions help Facebook understand the things you like and don’t like. You also teach Facebook which placement and formats you prefer to consume content.

It’s this intelligence and set of algorithmic adjustments that make even considering going broad a possibility. You want conversions. Facebook is good at hunting for them. Allow Facebook to hunt.

The Potential Issues

If you’ve read closely, you’ll know where this is heading.

Going broad has merit when optimizing for a conversion because the ad delivery system is good at finding people who convert and there’s no such thing as a low-quality purchase. The problem is with other types of optimization.

I’ve long complained about Facebook’s inability to optimize for quality traffic or engagement. All traffic, for example, is equal to the algorithm — it doesn’t matter whether it’s an accidental click or a 10-minute visit. We know differently, of course.

Because of that, going broad doesn’t feel smart when optimizing for anything other than a conversion. It just makes it more likely that the system will find low-quality actions for you. This is where ad delivery could use a guardrail with targeting (and that itself often isn’t enough).

About Narrow Targeting

So, does this mean that you should no longer use narrow targeting for conversion optimization? Not necessarily.

First, I’m not suggesting that going broad is a must when your optimization event is a conversion. Like everything else with ads, there are very few universal rules. Consider it as an option.

But there are also times when narrow targeting is still important. I still recommend it for powerfully relevant messaging when remarketing. This can’t be replaced.

There may be times when interests are such a strong signal that they’re more effective than going broad. But this will differ from industry to industry and product to product.

Watch Video

I created a quick video on this, too.

Your Turn

Do you go broad with your Facebook ads targeting? What do you think of this approach?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post Should You Go Broad with Facebook Ads Targeting? appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

If you ever feel like your Facebook ad results are too good to be true, they probably are. In the case of ThruPlay numbers, it’s likely due to the Audience Network Rewarded Video placement.

I’m glad I caught this quickly, but I guarantee that many other advertisers are wasting thousands and thousands of dollars, assuming they found some magic bullet that is giving them amazing results. Unfortunately, they likely won’t be too happy when and if they find out what is actually happening.

Let’s go through this from the beginning. In this post we’ll cover the following:

• What is ThruPlay?
• My campaign
• My results from ThruPlay
• What is Audience Network Rewarded Video?
• How to check placement distribution
• Why this was caused by Facebook Optimization
• What to Do?

Let’s go…

What is ThruPlay?

ThruPlay is a metric used for measuring Facebook video engagement. A “ThruPlay” is reported whenever your video is played to completion — or for at least 15 seconds.

That final part (“or for at least 15 seconds”) is what makes this metric so misleading. “Thru” suggests someone watched the whole thing. Well, that’s the case if the video is only 15 seconds long or shorter. But if it’s 30 seconds or two minutes or 10 minutes — nope. It just measures the number of people who watched for at least 15 seconds.

Anyway, that the metric is misleading isn’t really the focus of this post. This metric is used for both reporting and optimization purposes.

My Campaign

I don’t want to get too lost in the weeds here, but I think it’s necessary to explain what I was trying to do. I used a 20-second video to promote a podcast episode. I used both a CTA button (“Listen Now”) and a link in the text to drive people to the episode on Spotify.

This is a new podcast and it’s a non-business project, so I wasn’t looking to spend much at all. Just trying to get it off the ground.

Since I was sending people to Spotify, measurement and optimization were a bit tricky. I don’t own the destination website, so I won’t know how many people play the episode or subscribe to my show. My primary measure for success in Ads Manager will be Unique Outbound Clicks since that’s the only way I can measure direct clicks on my ad away from Facebook.

I’ve never been a huge fan of Link Clicks optimization since quality can be low, so I created three different ad sets optimized in three different ways:

• Link Clicks
• Post Engagement
• ThruPlays

The ThruPlays optimization, of course, is what inspired this blog post.

My Results from ThruPlay

Keep in mind that my budget was extremely modest on this campaign, so I wasn’t expecting much. But I quickly noticed something weird with the ad set that was optimized for ThruPlay. The results were… practically impossible.

This is crazy. Nearly every view was a ThruPlay. The average watch time was 20 seconds (the entire thing). The total number of ThruPlays is higher (126%) of the total number of people reached. Frequency was just 1.31, so how in the world was this possible?

This math essentially means that nearly every person who was reached with my ad watched the entire video. I realize I make a damn good video (I really don’t), but this doesn’t seem realistically possible.

One more element: Of the 600 or so people who watched the entire video, only ONE resulted in an outbound click. So, my video was so engaging that people wanted to watch the entire thing. But, the entire point of the video was to get them to click and listen to my podcast episode. And yet, only ONE person did that?

This really didn’t make sense. It made me ask a lot of questions. I shared it with my Power Hitters Club – Elite community, and one very alert member suggested I look into the Audience Network Rewarded Video placement.

Audience Network Rewarded Video

Audience Network is how app developers monetize their apps with Facebook ads. They place ads inside their apps so that advertisers can target users with Facebook ads but away from the Meta family of apps.

Here’s the best way to explain Audience Network since it all made sense to me once I was exposed to my own ad the first time on Trivia Crack years ago. You’re playing a third party app that is probably free. It’s not a Facebook app. But your ads may appear there. That’s how those apps make money.

I actually remember seeing my ad on Trivia Crack. In fact, I clicked it accidentally — which is one of my biggest complaints about the placement.

But that was related to link clicks and landing page views. There is also a Rewarded Video placement. This is how Facebook defines it:

Rewarded video ads are a fullscreen experience where users opt-in to view a video ad in exchange for something of value, such as virtual currency, in-app items, exclusive content, and more.

Do you see how this placement is problematic? People are forced to watch these videos — not just a little bit, but the entire video — in exchange for something of value in the app. The user has no interest in the thing you are promoting in the video. They are only watching (loosely) to get something for it.

How to Check Distribution by Placement

Hopefully you’re aware of the Breakdown feature because it’s an immensely valuable tool. This is how you can breakdown you results by placement.

Click the “Breakdown” dropdown on the right in Ads Manager. Then select “By Delivery” and then “Placement.”

And there it is. The vast majority of my ad spend was used for the Audience Network Rewarded Video placement.

This would explain why the ThruPlay percentage was so high. These people were forced to watch the entire video. It also explains why there was only a single outbound click. These people are deeply engaged with an app (probably a game). They’re only watching the video to get something they can use for the app. Why would they click out of that experience?

They wouldn’t. And they didn’t.

How This Was Caused by Facebook Optimization

Of course, this is absolutely not what I wanted. I wanted people to watch my entire video — but only because the assumption was that if someone watched the entire video they’d be more likely to click to listen to my podcast. But that’s not going to happen in this case because it’s not normal.

This is one of the many problems with Facebook ads optimization. If you optimize for something, all Facebook cares about it getting you as many of those things as possible for the lowest cost. While that might be great for purchases, it’s often going to create issues for other actions.

I only want people to watch my entire video because I assume that these are normal people. And if they were normal people, watching an entire video would make them more likely to click to listen to my podcast. But that wasn’t happening. Why? Because this is the lowest quality possible of a ThruPlay.

The same thing happens if you optimize for Link Clicks or Landing Page Views or Post Engagement or just about anything else. Facebook does not care about whether the actions they get for you are quality actions. They only care that they get you as many as possible.

The problem, though, is that there are many ways to get these low-quality actions and Facebook’s systems will go straight to them if you tell them that’s what you want. This is one of many very specific examples of how it can be manipulated.

What to Do?

If you ever have this issue and you want to prevent your ads from being shown on the Audience Network Rewarded Video placement, you can.

Within the ad set, make sure to select Manual Placements.

If you want, you can just turn off Audience Network entirely under Platforms.

You can also choose to uncheck the Rewarded Video placement specifically if you want to keep the other Audience Network placements running.

Your Turn

So, I encourage you — if you get results that are too good to be true, don’t assume that you’re just an advertising god. Do a little digging. Think about why these results might be possible. Often, it’s a weakness in the way Facebook optimizes.

Have you seen these issues with Audience Network Rewarded Video and other placements?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post Audience Network Rewarded Video Placement and Inflated ThruPlay Numbers appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

Facebook does a really good job of optimizing for conversions. It’s why Facebook ads are so effective for ecommerce businesses. But, Facebook ads optimization is much less kind to content creators.

When I speak of content creators, I’m referring specifically to bloggers in this case. People whose website content is central to their business. Like… me.

The quick counterargument would be that you can easily run ads for content creators now. You can run traffic campaigns or engagement campaigns. But, this is missing the point. The point is that Facebook ignores quality for these options.

It’s actually something that’s been driving me crazy of late. My business relies on content to attract people — the right people — into my funnel. The more of those “right” people I can bring in, the more revenue comes out the other end.

I know I’m not alone here. Let’s discuss the problems with optimization for content creators and what Facebook could do about it.

The Problems with Optimization

I’ve spoken and written before about the holes in Facebook optimization, especially for engagement and traffic. Ultimately, Facebook doesn’t care about quality.

You want link clicks or landing page views? FINE! Here’s a whole bunch of them, nice and cheap.

Because that’s how Facebook ads optimization works. You tell Facebook you want link clicks or landing page views and Facebook will get you as many as it can for the lowest cost.

Sure, those clicks may be spam, bots, accidental clicks, immediate abandons, and people who are confused once they get to your website. Facebook doesn’t care. Quality is not a consideration.

Wait, you wanted people who will actually do something after visiting your website? Sorry. Facebook won’t know how to do that. And this, of course, is the problem.

It’s not that I expect all of these people to do something. But if Facebook sends me 4,200 people (like what happened in this example), I expect some of them to do things like convert. I’ve found that this just doesn’t happen.

And, of course, there’s not anything technically wrong with that. Facebook is doing what Facebook thinks we want. But, it’s not that simple.

If a content creator wants to grow, they need to attract a new, cold audience. One method to do that is with Facebook ads. But, doing this will only be productive if Facebook can bring in quality people who will actually care about the content they’re consuming.

If you’re wondering, I’ve tried every option and applied every guardrail possible to help show Facebook what a quality visitor looks like. Instead of landing page views, I’ve even optimized for conversions where the goal action is a custom event based on time spent, scroll depth, or pages viewed during a session.

Amazing, even that doesn’t help.

Low-quality traffic is counterproductive. It waters down my retargeting audiences. It makes my funnel less effective. I need Facebook to find quality readers — not just people who will visit, but people who will click around and return later.

What Facebook Can Do

What bothers me about this is that there’s really no excuse. Facebook has all of the data in the world. They’re certainly capable of helping content creators send quality traffic with ads.

I can see it. Facebook could do it.

What if, when running a traffic campaign, you could optimize for…

• Traffic Volume (essentially what happens now) OR
• Traffic QUALITY

If you choose Traffic Quality, Facebook will then optimize to show your ads to people most likely to:

• Spend the most time on your website
• View multiple pages of your website
• RETURN to your website

Facebook would learn based on these target actions and report on these things as your goal results.

This, of course, would mean fewer and more expensive traffic events. It may make it harder to exit the learning phase and may require higher budgets.

But — and I’m sure I speak for a whole lot of content creators out there — it’s a tradeoff I’d take any day.

Your Turn

What do you think? Is this something you’d use?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post Facebook Needs an Ads Optimization Option for Content Creators appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

I have long warned Facebook advertisers about the potential pitfalls related to types of optimization and broad audience targeting — particularly when used together. So, what I’m about to describe isn’t necessarily a bombshell revelation. But, it’s a situation advertisers will often find themselves in, and the discovery of misleading results can be alarming.

I’d take that a step further. I have serious concerns about how Facebook builds cold targeting audiences and optimizes for top-of-the-funnel events. If you’re not careful, you will embrace the results and keep on spending.

That, to me, is the problem here. An advertiser who doesn’t know better will see the surface-level results and keep writing checks (or charging their card). And Facebook will happily take that money.

In this post, I’m going to explain what I did. Not only the multiple efforts I made to create cold audiences that would work, but how I adjusted optimization to help eliminate misleading, fluff traffic results. Nothing worked.

But, I’ll also share what’s most important: How I was able to detect that these results weren’t nearly as good as what Facebook was reporting. And how you can follow a similar approach.

Let’s go…

My Goal: Drive Website Traffic to My Blog

My website is a very important piece of my marketing puzzle. I rely on a basic funnel, rather than focusing on converting cold traffic directly to a sale. Free blog content answers questions and verifies expertise, leading to registration for some free thing, leading to one of a number of ways a person might buy from me.

My focus is on lifetime value, not immediate value. You may not buy today. You may not buy a year from now. You may not buy ever. But, I hope to gain your trust so that you’ll eventually be a loyal, paying customer — or recommend me to someone who will be.

While the vast majority of my blog traffic is organic (Google and email newsletter, especially), I want to drive more traffic, if I can. I do drive traffic by targeting warm audiences, but I recently decided to put more budget behind sending cold — but relevant — traffic to my blog.

More traffic leads to more registrations for some free thing which leads to more sales.

My Campaigns

During a period of about two weeks, I would spend close to $1,500 to drive traffic to various blog posts on my website by targeting cold audiences. I used five different approaches, running at separate times.

1. Traffic objective optimizing for Landing Page Views, targeting Lookalike Audiences, experimenting with various Cost Caps.

2. Engagement objective with Website conversion location optimizing for 70% scroll (no Cost Cap) while targeting Lookalike Audiences.

3. Engagement objective with Website conversion location optimizing for 70% scroll (no Cost Cap) while targeting Lookalike Audiences layered with interests.

4. Engagement objective with Website conversion location optimizing for 70% scroll (no Cost Cap) while targeting interests only.

5. Engagement objective with Website conversion location optimizing for 2 page views per session while targeting interests only.

I’ve written before about how I use custom events to optimize for conversions while focusing on quality traffic. That’s what I was doing from campaigns two through five.

The Surface Level Results

Overall, Facebook was reporting some results that could have been acceptable — even good — depending on your perspective.

The CTR for all five campaigns combined was about 3%. The Cost Per Click was $.34. The Cost Per Landing Page View was $.36. It even generated 60-second view events at under $1 each.

Overall, these campaigns drove 3,745 Landing Page Views. According to Google Analytics (using URL parameters), these ads sent about 4,200 people. My goal was to send cold traffic to my blog posts, and Facebook surely did that.

Let’s keep those 3,745 LPV and 4,200 users numbers handy.

Establishing a Baseline for Expectations

Before we dig deeper into the results of these campaigns, it’s important to establish some reasonable expectations. We can’t just blindly determine results are good or bad without some research. We can do that based on some of the other data that I have.

First, I run a Reach campaign targeting warm audiences to promote blog posts — just like the blog posts promoted to cold audiences in the campaigns above. When I add columns for Complete Registrations, Purchases, and Searches, I see that this campaign generated the following actions during January:

• Landing Page Views: 318
• Complete Registrations: 75
• Purchases: 1
• Searches: 61

So, the ratio of conversions (137) to Landing Page View (318) is an admittedly high 43-percent. Keep in mind that Ads Manager will report on view-through conversions and conversions that happened as many as seven days later, and this likely contributed to these results from such a warm audience.

I did use URL parameters for this Reach campaign targeting a warm audience, and those results were a bit more tempered. While I don’t include Searches within my Google Analytics Goals (which will certainly bring this number down), the conversion rate (purchases and registrations) in that case was 2.78%.

The conversion rate for that campaign isn’t far off from the overall conversion rate for all traffic to my website. Google Analytics reports a total conversion rate for all traffic of 3.28% during the month of January.

But, let’s also segment that traffic to set expectations. Google Analytics breaks out New Visitors (most likely to be similar to the traffic from my cold audience campaigns) from Returning Visitors.

• New Traffic Conversion Rate: 2.60%
• Returning Traffic Conversion Rate: 5.24%

Now, what the person clicked on to get to the website matters, too. Any conversion that occurs when someone enters the website to view a blog post is incidental. These numbers also include people who went directly to landing pages.

Let’s recap:

1. Warm Audience Reach Campaign Promoting Blog Posts Conversion Rate of 43-percent. This was really high, and it’s likely impacted by how Facebook reports conversions. That benefit will be far greater for warm audiences that may return to my website during a 7-day period.

2. Google Analytics Conversion Rate of 2.78% for Reach Campaign Promoting Blog Posts to Warm Audience. This feels more in line with what we should expect, though a cold audience will obviously be less effective.

3. Overall Website Conversion Rate of 3.28%. Since some traffic goes directly to a landing page, I’d expect conversion rates from blog posts to be lower. These conversions would be incidental.

4. New Traffic Conversion Rate of 2.60%. Once again, we should expect something lower since that rate includes traffic to landing pages.

So, lower than 2.78% and 2.60%. A reasonable expectation would be something between 1.0% and 2.0%.

Remember the earlier number of Landing Page Views (3,745) reported by Facebook and users (4,200) by Google Analytics? Now, let’s do some math to set a baseline.

• 2.0% Conversion Rate: 75 – 84 Conversions
• 1.5% Conversion Rate: 56 – 63 Conversions
• 1.0% Conversion Rate: 37 – 42 Conversions

Even if we drop all the way down to 0.5%, we can expect 19 – 21 conversions. So, on the lowest end, I’m expecting something around 20 conversions. We’re going to set expectations low so that we can be pleasantly surprised if it’s more.

Conversions Reported in Ads Manager

Earlier, I showed you how Ads Manager reported a pretty insane 43% conversion rate for my Reach Campaign targeting a warm audience. For obvious reasons, I should not have expected numbers this high for a cold audience.

Still, I expected somewhere between .5% (worst case scenario) to 2% conversion rate. I’m hoping for at least 20 conversions.

Instead, this…

Of the 3,745 Landing Page Views, not a single visit resulted in a free registration or purchase. All I have to show for it is THREE searches (and they all popped into the same campaign at the same time, meaning it was likely a single user).

Well, this is not 20. But, it’s possible that Facebook is unable to report some of the conversions, for a number of reasons.

Conversions Reported in Google Analytics

Luckily, I also used URL parameters so that I can check results in Google Analytics for all of these campaigns.

You’ll recall that the campaign promoting blog posts to my warm audience resulted in a 2.79% conversion rate according to Google Analytics. Also considering the 2.60% New Traffic conversion rate, we were reasonably expecting something between a 0.5% (on the very low end) and 2.0% conversion rate with these cold traffic campaigns.

According to Google Analytics, these campaigns resulted in nearly 4,200 users (4,188 to be exact), a bounce rate of 98.21%, and… not a single conversion of any kind.

Not a 2.0% conversion rate. Not 1.5%. Not 1.0%. Not 0.5%. Not even 0.1%. No conversions at all.

What is the Problem Here?

The source audiences for my Lookalikes were registrations and purchases. Those source audiences SHOULD be good. Is it how Facebook constructed those audiences? Is it because Facebook now uses Lookalike Expansion?

The interests should also be solid. I made sure to isolate advertisers and digital marketing strategists. Even the Jon Loomer Digital interest. But, could Facebook’s default use of Targeting Expansion be a reason for the conversion campaigns?

Could it be that there were high-quality people in the Lookalikes and interests, but Facebook prefers the low-quality ones? And why would that be? Is it due to the cost to reach those high-quality users just to send traffic?

Could it be the nature of the optimization I used? Even when I optimized for 70% scroll, Facebook found users who would perform the actions I wanted. It’s just that, strangely, none of these people would take an additional step.

It feels so statistically improbable that Facebook could send nearly 4,200 people to my website and not a single one would end up converting. While that may not have been Facebook’s goal (obviously), how is it that Facebook didn’t even luck into sending one of 4,200 people who would decide to convert while they were on my website?.

Is there a reasonable explanation?

I’m not a conspiracy theorist. I tend to favor the most obvious and simplest explanation. But I have a hard time explaining this.

Now What?

Consider this a cautionary tale.

I used every guardrail possible. I created Lookalikes based on very high-quality sources. I did things most advertisers wouldn’t, including optimizing for and tracking high-quality traffic custom events. The typical advertiser may not even spot these issues. They’d just keep spending their money.

It makes it seem virtually impossible to send quality traffic that actually has the potential to convert when optimizing for Landing Page Views or a traffic conversion while targeting a cold, broad audience. This, though, is a problem for a couple of reasons.

First, Facebook often recommends optimizing for Link Clicks and Landing Page Views if you can’t get the necessary volume to exit the learning phase when you want conversions. It would seem that this would not be a productive approach.

This is also counterproductive related to building your website custom audiences. By sending these 4,200 people to my website, I am watering down the quality of what is otherwise a very effective group of people to target.

This doesn’t mean that optimizing for Landing Page Views and custom events for traffic as I have will never work. It doesn’t mean you shouldn’t ever target broad audiences.

But, you should be careful. You should be aware of how misleading results can be. Look beyond the Landing Page Views, CTR, CPC, and more.

This is a big reason why I continue having a hard time abandoning my warm audiences, despite Facebook’s insistence that its optimization is amazing and you should go broad. That may work for purchases, but you should be ultra vigilant when it comes to traffic or engagement.

Your Turn

What has been your experience with driving traffic to your website while targeting cold audiences?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post Of 4,200 Visitors Driven by a Facebook Ad, How Many Should Convert? appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

On January 9, I told you about ODAX (Outcome-Based Ad Experiences), which is Facebook’s new campaign objective flow. Going forward, Facebook advertisers will have six objectives to choose from, instead of 11.

I didn’t have the update at the time, so I could only share what was public knowledge. While I’m still waiting on it for my main ad account, I do have access to it from my inactive ad accounts (because of course I do).

The biggest mystery to me prior to getting access was how this impacted ad set options. It’s a mystery no more.

Let’s walk through each objective and how it relates to some minor changes in the ad set.

Awareness

DESCRIPTION: “Show your ads to people who are most likely to remember them.”

GOOD FOR:

• Reach
• Brand Awareness
• Video Views

You’ll typically use Awareness when actions aren’t a priority (though there are exceptions). The primary goal is to get your ad in front of people and hopefully have them remember seeing it.

Combining Reach and Brand Awareness made sense (these were separate objectives in the old version). The surprise was including Video Views in this group, though it is logical. Videos are great for getting attention, but not always ideal for driving actions.

This is updated in Optimization & Delivery. While “Reach” is the default, there are several additional options:

• Reach
• Impressions
• Ad Recall Lift
• ThruPlay
• 2-Second Continuous Video Views

Under the old Brand Awareness objective, the only optimization option was Ad Recall Lift. The old Reach objective allowed for Reach or Impressions. You needed to use the old Video Views objective before to optimize for ThruPlay or 2-Second Continuous Video Views.

Now, all three are combined under Reach.

Traffic

DESCRIPTION: “Send people to a destination, like your website, app, or Facebook event.”

GOOD FOR:

• Link Clicks
• Landing Page Views

You’ll use Traffic when you care more about getting people on your website, app, or Facebook event than having them perform an action once they’re there.

There’s a minor change to the top of the ad set, though it’s mostly cosmetic.

Here’s the old version…

And here’s the new ODAX version (no Phone Calls)…

ODAX is missing Phone Calls from Traffic, but we’ll find that later under Leads.

The optimization options will depend upon your Conversion Location. These are unchanged from the prior design.

Website:

• Landing Page Views
• Link Clicks
• Daily Unique Reach
• Impressions

App:

• Link Clicks
• Daily Unique Reach

Messenger:

• Link Clicks
• Daily Unique Reach
• Impressions

WhatsApp:

• Link Clicks
• Daily Unique Reach
• Impressions

Engagement: Genearal Overview

DESCRIPTION: “Get more messages, video views, post engagement, Page likes or event responses.”

GOOD FOR:

• Messages
• Video Views
• Likes, Comments, and Shares

You’ll use Engagement when you want to generate clicks, discussion, and possibly virality, but you don’t care whether these people perform any bottom-of-the-funnel events.

Okay, so this is a pretty complicated update. Previously, you selected the engagement type at the campaign level:

With ODAX, this is now done at the top of the ad set (and it’s WAY different):

As you can see, you first select the conversion location among these options:

• On Your Ad
• Messaging Apps
• Website
• App
• Facebook Page

And then you select the engagement type below it. And we haven’t even gotten to the optimization yet. That’s a lot!

Let’s break this up by conversion location because there’s a lot to cover here.

Engagement: On Your Ad

If you select “On Your Ad” for the conversion location, you can choose from video views, post engagement, and event responses as engagement types.

Following are the optimization options for each…

• Video Views: ThruPlay, 2-Second Continuous Video Views
• Post Engagement: Post Engagement, Daily Unique Reach, Impressions
• Event Responses: Post Engagement, Daily Unique Reach, Event Response, Impressions

Engagement: Messaging Apps

When you select Messaging Apps as your conversion location, you first need to choose an ad type (pick from Click to Message or Sponsored Message).

Next, you’ll need to select the messaging apps you want to use (Messenger, WhatsApp, Instagram Direct) and the associated accounts.

If you create a Click to Message ad with any of the messaging apps individually (you don’t select them all), you’ll be able to optimize for Link Clicks or Conversations.

I don’t know if this is an oversight, but if you select multiple apps for Click to Message, you can only optimize for Conversations.

Sponsored Messages are only available for Messenger, and they allow you to optimize for Impressions only.

Engagement: Website

When you select your website as the conversion location, you’ll need to choose a pixel and conversion event. What’s interesting is that Facebook won’t allow me to select Complete Registration, Purchase, or Initiate Checkout here. It absolutely makes sense because these wouldn’t seem like “engagement” events, but it’s interesting that Facebook seems to have this (good) control in place.

All of the events that I can select would certainly qualify more as engagement (Link Clicks, View Content, Scroll Depth, Search, etc.).

What appears here, of course, will depend upon the events that fire on your website.

Once I select one of the available events, I’m able to optimize for Conversions, Landing Page Views, Link Clicks, Daily Unique Reach, or Impressions.

Engagement: App

After selecting the App conversion location, you’ll need to choose your app, App Store, and App Event (sorry, I don’t have an app!).

You will then be able to optimize for App Events, Link Clicks, or Daily Unique Reach.

Engagement: Facebook Page

Finally, if you select Facebook Page as your conversion location, you’ll first need to select the page you’ll want to promote.

The only optimization option is Page Likes.

Leads: General

DESCRIPTION: “Collect leads for your business or brand.”

GOOD FOR:

• Instant Forms
• Messages
• Calls
• Sign ups

The most interesting thing about the new Leads objective is that it combines all methods of collecting leads. Previously, “Lead Generation” was only for Instant Forms, Automated Chat, or Calls.

Again, this is the OLD version…

But, with ODAX, you select from Website, Instant Forms, Messenger, Calls, or App.

As was the case with Engagement, there’s a lot here to digest. So, let’s break it up by conversion location…

Leads: Website

If you select Website as the conversion location, you’ll need to also choose your pixel and conversion event.

As was the case with website engagement, Facebook restricts the events that you can select. Among standard events, I’m unable to select Initiate Checkout, Purchase, Search, or View Content (which makes sense since none of these should represent a lead).

Optimization options are typical, providing Conversions, Landing Page Views, Link Clicks, Daily Unique Reach, and Impressions.

Leads: Instant Forms and Messenger

Of course, Instant Forms are the historical standard for Facebook leads optimization. You’ll select your page at the top and then can optimize for Leads or Conversion Leads (a rather new development during the past year).

If you select Messenger, you’ll also select your page at the top. The only optimization option, in this case, is Leads.

Leads: Calls

If you want to generate phone calls, this is how you do it. Choose the Leads objective and select Calls as the conversion location.

The only optimization option will be Calls.

Leads: App

The final Conversion Location you can select for Leads is App. Select your app, app store, and app event at the top. You can optimize for App Events, Link Clicks, and Daily Unique Reach.

App Promotion

DESCRIPTION: “Find new people to install your app and continue using it.”

GOOD FOR:

• App Installs
• App Events

While we’re on the topic of apps, let’s move from collecting leads with apps to generating installs and app events. This functions mostly unchanged from the prior App Installs objective.

After selecting App Promotion, you can choose from App Ads or Automated App Ads.

When using Automated App Ads, you can optimize for App Installs, App Installs with App Events, App Events, or Value.

For App Ads, you can optimize for Link Clicks, Value, App Events, or App Installs.

Sales: General

DESCRIPTION: “Find people likely to purchase your product or service.”

GOOD FOR:

• Conversions
• Catalog Sales
• Messages

You’ll recall that previously you’d select the Conversions objective to optimize for a purchase. Facebook has separated value-based from nonvalue-based conversions by using Leads and Purchases.

If you turn on the catalog, you can run Catalog Sales (Dynamic Ads).

Otherwise, Facebook provides five options for conversion locations: Website, App, Website and App, Messenger, and WhatsApp.

Let’s cover each individually…

Sales: Website

First, select your pixel and pixel event at the top of the ad set.

While I was prevented from selecting the Search event, I found it interesting that Facebook didn’t prevent me from selecting other events (like View content) that aren’t value-based.

Optimization is mostly unchanged from before, providing options for Conversions, Landing Page Views, Link Clicks, Daily Unique Reach, and Impressions.

I’m not seeing Value as an option, but I assume that’s only because I’m using a test account (or, at least, I hope that’s why).

Sales: App

If you select App as the conversion destination, you’ll first need to select the app, app store, and app event at the top of the ad set.

Optimization options are App Events, Link Clicks, and Daily Unique Reach.

Sales: Website and App

This is interesting. It allows you to select both your website and app at the same time. Once you do, you’ll need to select your pixel and app at the top of the ad set.

Conversions will be the only option for optimization.

Sales: Messenger

If you select Messenger as your conversion destination, you will still need to select your pixel and event.

Your default optimization option will be Conversations, but you will also be able to optimize for Conversions, Link Clicks, Daily Unique Reach, and Impressions.

Sales: WhatsApp

The setup for WhatsApp is similar to Messenger, but you’ll need to select your WhatsApp account (assuming you have one).

Optimization options for WhatsApp purchases are Link Clicks (default), Daily Unique Reach, and Impressions.

Recap: The Biggest Changes

Overall, this is mostly a matter of simplification and streamlining how advertisers go through the campaign creation process. Facebook felt it was getting confusing for advertisers before, so these changes were made.

This is more about “moving the cheese” than anything. There doesn’t appear to be any lost functionality, that I can find.

Is the process easier? Well, the objective-selection process clearly is. But, you’ll also notice that the ad sets are now far more complicated, particularly for Engagement, Leads, and Purchases.

That said, the flow seems clearer. You set your goal (the objective). You tell Facebook where you want to send people. And then Facebook provides optimization options consistent with what you’ve selected.

While that was theoretically the case before, one could argue that it was less logical.

Your Turn

Have you started using ODAX, the new streamlined objective selection process? What do you think?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post Hands On with ODAX: A Guide to Facebook Objectives appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

The most important characteristic of a successful Facebook advertiser is the willingness to experiment. It is your experimentation with Facebook ads that will lead to knowledge, solutions, and success.

Instead of asking, “Should I…” related to a basic Facebook ads strategy, know that there is very little black and white (outside of the rules themselves). What works for you may not work for me, and vice versa. If you want to know if something will work, try it!

It’s really easy to get stuck in your ways, too. As someone who has been running my own business with Facebook ads for a decade now, I fully appreciate how quickly you can rely solely on tried and true methods. It’s so easy to end up with a templated approach.

The problem, of course, is that while your approach remains unchanged, the advertising environment is evolving quickly. It’s all so much different today than it even was a year ago. Fail to evolve your strategies, and you can expect to get buried in frustration.

You should experiment often. It’s what keeps me sharp and helps me uncover things that I’d never know without trying something new. I’m working on an experiment right now that I’ll explain in more detail at the bottom of this post.

For now, let’s cover the primary buckets of experimentation opportunities you should be taking with your Facebook advertising…

1. A/B Testing

If you’re trying to figure out whether one thing works better than another, Facebook’s built-in A/B testing tool is the only way to get a true, scientific test without overlap. This is the best way to determine the best strategies based on things like image, video, text, targeting, and more.

A/B testing isn’t something you should be doing for the long term. It’s a short-term test (1-30 days) to help you understand what works best going forward.

You don’t need to use A/B testing in all scenarios. Maybe you’re fine without a true, scientific test and just want to run separate ad sets to different audiences or separate ads with different creative options. All of that is fine. Facebook’s optimization will also help focus on what is working best in those cases.

Here is some additional documentation on A/B testing:

• A/B Tests Types Available on Facebook
• Best Practices for A/B Testing

2. Campaign Budget Optimization

Should you create multiple ad sets with their own, separate budgets, or should you utilize Campaign Budget Optimization (CBO)?

If you turn on CBO, Facebook will distribute your budget “optimally” between ad sets to get the most results. So, you could set a $50 daily budget with CBO using two ad sets, and Facebook will move budget between those ad sets based on the results each one generates.

If you don’t use CBO, you would set individual budgets at the ad set level. Here, of course, you are given more control. Maybe you are okay spending more per action for a particular audience. Maybe you don’t trust Facebook’s optimization.

I prefer the control, but I will occasionally experiment with CBO, particularly if the audiences are similar in size.

3. Budgeting

I understand that this is a tough one to test. Either you have the budget available or you don’t.

But keep in mind that volume drives Facebook ad optimization. If you struggle to generate enough volume at $10 per day to exit the learning phase, Facebook may struggle to get you the results that you want. Maybe spending $50 or $100 per day will get that volume, and everything will change.

Or maybe it won’t? Bottom line is that it’s nice to be able to try it and find out.

4. Daily vs. Lifetime

This is one that I can confidently say I am stuck in my ways. I have always used Daily budgeting.

It’s not because I get better results with Daily budgets. It’s just that I feel like I have a far better understanding of what is happening and can easily adjust. Getting great results? Maybe I spend a little more per day. Results are dropping? Maybe I slow it down.

I’ve always felt that Lifetime budget is best in cases where you (or a client) have a rigid budget to work with. You know that you want to spend $500 during the month, and that’s it.

The rumor is that Facebook ad reps recommend Lifetime budgeting. Does it actually work better? If you care, test it out!

5. Dayparting

If you aren’t familiar with Dayparting, it is only available when using Lifetime budgets. It allows you to schedule your ads so that they only run during certain times or on certain days of the week.

A few years back, I was determined to make dayparting work. I researched which specific times of day gave me the best results for a certain objective over a six-month period. Then, I focused only on those times.

The result? Costs actually went up.

Maybe you can get dayparting to work for you. I’ve never heard of anyone who has seen better results by using it. Maybe you want to use it because you need to have staff on hand during certain times. That may be the best argument for it.

6. Small Audiences vs. Large Audiences

If you ever ask Facebook advertisers whether it’s better to use small audiences or large audiences, you’re going to get a very wide range of answers. The best answer: It depends.

Facebook says you should use large audiences (in the millions) to create a large pool for optimization. Some advertisers absolutely swear by using the largest audiences possible. They even say removing any filtering at all and going with an entire region works best.

But, context likely matters. How large is the country? Is the brand well-known? How large is the brand’s built-in audience? Are there repeat customers? How are you optimizing?

I’ve found that optimization with large audiences for top-of-the-funnel actions produces garbage results. Actually, those results are good in the eyes of Facebook, but they aren’t quality results that lead to purchases (read this post about the problems with optimization).

I love micro-targeting my audience for those who have performed a specific action. Remarketing to tiny audiences of people who abandoned cart, too, often works well.

There is a place for large and small audiences. Feel free to experiment with both!

7. Lookalike Audiences vs. Interests and Behaviors

What’s more effective, targeting people based on interests or using Lookalike Audiences? And if you use Lookalike Audiences, what should be the source? And should you use 1% or 10%? Or something else? Should you layer interests on top of Lookalike Audiences and combine them?

So many questions, right? The problem is that there isn’t a universal answer. “It depends” is doing overtime here.

The performance of your interest targeting depends upon the quality of the interests you use. The quality of interests you have available to you often depends upon the industry you’re in.

Lookalike Audiences, too, will vary greatly in performance depending upon the quality of the source audience and how Facebook assembled it. Whether you use 1% or 10% is also greatly impacted by the countries used (and you may not need to debate this one anymore due to Lookalike Expansion).

There is no universal answer here because the factors involved will drastically impact the answer. My primary suggestion is that you explore both interests and Lookalike Audience targeting for top-of-the-funnel, knowing that this is their first exposure to your brand. Adjust your expectations accordingly.

But which interests and Lookalike Audiences should you use? Test, test, and test some more. This is where using the A/B Test option may prove valuable.

8. Country Targeting

If you’re a local brick-and-mortar business, this is easy. You probably only want to reach people within driving distance of your building.

But, if you create virtual products or ship globally, everything changes. Then the question becomes, “Which countries should you target?”

This gets really complicated. The CPM (Cost Per 1,000 Impressions) costs vary widely depending on the country. But that’s also at least partially related to the quality and competition within those countries.

Some countries are much more prone to spam, bots, and people who can’t afford your products. Does that mean you shouldn’t target them? Maybe. Maybe not.

If you’ve been in business for a while, I encourage you to research where your paying customers come from. That should at least be a starting point.

Be careful, though. Let’s say that you have paying customers in the US, UK, Canada, Australia, and India. If you include all five countries in the same ad set, Facebook may dedicate more of your budget to India (particularly if you aren’t selling a product). The reason is that the CPMs are much lower there than in the other four countries.

You may want some control over that. This is where creating multiple ad sets for similarly priced countries may be a good idea.

Have proper perspective here. Targeting globally all of the time using all objectives is probably a bad idea. Refusing to target certain countries may also limit your opportunities. Know the risks and know how to mitigate those risks.

9. All Placements vs. Select Placements

Look, I have a very strong opinion about one Facebook placement in particular. I have seen really bad stuff from Audience Network. It’s where the most click fraud and accidental clicks happen. The Audience Network is often the source of “too-good-to-be-true” results (because they are).

At least in the case of traffic and engagement campaigns. Leave that placement on and be prepared to throw some money away. And hope you catch it before it’s too late.

But, is that a hard-and-fast rule for everyone? Of course not. If you get sales from Audience Network, use it. There are a lot of placements these days. Find what works for you and what doesn’t.

Facebook recommends using “All Placements.” I can see that being fine when optimizing for a purchase. Otherwise, scrutinize your results, do a lot of testing, and figure out what works best for you.

10. Optimization Options

This is one of those areas that provides a wide variety of possibilities.

Should you optimize for conversions? Maybe. If you can get results. You may not have the budget to generate enough results to properly optimize. In that case, you may need to optimize for something else.

Does that mean optimizing for link clicks or Landing Page Views? Or Engagement? Maybe. But be wary of the results you get there (as discussed before).

When I micro-target, I don’t want Facebook to optimize for an event. I want to reach everyone within that tiny audience. In that case, I’ll optimize for Reach (or you could even use Daily Unique Reach).

You have a ton of options. There isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach. The main thing is to understand how optimization works and what Facebook needs to properly optimize. Make sure it fits your goals. Know the potential weaknesses of optimizing for a specific action.

I only started optimizing for Reach because it solved a problem I had. I’ve used it in a way that isn’t even how Facebook intends it (they see it more for broad audience, awareness targeting).

Know how it works. Know what you want to accomplish. Understand the weaknesses. Then test!

11. Bidding Options

If you need a place to start, don’t screw around with Facebook’s bidding options. Just roll with Facebook’s “Lowest Cost” defaults.

But once you’re comfortable, feel free to experiment with Cost Cap, Bid Cap, and Minimum ROAS bidding. They are all ways of manipulating how Facebook bids in the auction, rather than relying on Facebook to do it how they want.

Sometimes, manual bidding just leads to frustration and a lack of delivery. It’s not magical. You can’t mysteriously tell Facebook you want $1 conversions and get $1 conversions. If you under-bid, you just won’t get any results.

Once you understand how it works, though, put bidding on your list of things to experiment with.

12. Attribution Setting

Oh, how attribution has changed…

Attribution, or how Facebook gives credit to an ad for a conversion, has evolved quite a bit over the years. The main thing to know is that the default Attribution Setting is now 7-day click and 1-day view.

This is determined within the ad set.

Not only is this how Facebook will optimize your conversions, but it’s how Facebook will report on them. If you change the Attribution Setting, it will change how Facebook selects your audience. It could also impact how many conversions are reported in your results.

Back in the day, this was no big deal. If you used 1-day click, for example, you could add columns to your reporting to see how many conversions occurred outside of that window. That option is no longer available.

So, now? You can still make the argument that 1-day click is best for opt-ins and low-cost purchases while 7-day click and 1-day view is best for higher-cost purchases. Still, I find I’m reluctant to make that change, fearing a loss of reporting.

It’s absolutely something to test, though!

13. Website vs. On-Facebook Experience

Ever since the iOS 14+ changes related to privacy and tracking, there has been more reason to run ads that keep people on Facebook. It’s understandable. Confidence in results goes way up in those cases.

That doesn’t mean there’s no longer a place for sending traffic to your website. I still do it a ton. It depends partially on your percentage of iOS traffic (mine is low) and appetite for accuracy.

Reasons to keep people on Facebook go up if your iOS traffic is high. Or you have a client with a horrible website experience.

Consider Facebook lead ads, instant experiences, video ads, and Facebook Shops. There are plenty of ways to run your business while keeping people on Facebook.

I still love to use both. Lead ads, for example, have their strengths and weaknesses. You’ll often get more sign-ups because they’re so easy to complete. But the quality of those leads may drop for that same reason.

Don’t throw all of your eggs into one basket, as they say. Experiment with keeping people on Facebook and sending them away.

14. CTAs (or None)

All these years later, and the jury’s still out on whether you should use Facebook CTA buttons with your ads. And if you do, which ones you should use.

Some CTA options may lead to more clicks, but are they the right clicks? Some CTAs may lead to fewer clicks, but people with higher intent.

One way to test this is by using Dynamic Creative.

If you turn it on within the ad set, you can submit multiple CTA options for Facebook to test.

15. Dynamic Ads vs. Manual

It makes a lot of sense for e-commerce businesses with hundreds or thousands of products to use Dynamic Ads to showcase the right ads to the right people while doing minimal work. Create an ad template, provide a product feed, and everything is done for you.

Of course, such ads based on a template may also be less effective on some level, as well. You may get better results by crafting a very specific message based on someone’s activity on your website who is interested in a very specific product.

There is room for both. Try both.

16. Ad Formats

You have options. Single image, collection, instant experience, carousel, video. You can even mix and match, to a point.

When determining which to use, I ask a simple question: What is the benefit of this ad format?

A single image removes options and may make a click away to your website more likely.

A collection or carousel provides your audience with options.

An Instant Experience allows you to tell a story and provide more information within a single ad.

A video will encourage engagement and allow you to communicate with a potential customer in a completely different way, but it may not lead to a click.

Start with the format that is most likely to satisfy your primary goal. From there, feel free to use Facebook’s A/B testing to test what works best. You can also simply create multiple ads, each with different formats, and allow Facebook to optimize.

17. Long Copy vs. Short Copy

It’s long been debated whether long copy or short copy is best. As always, we over-simplify this.

If you take an average of the performance of all ads, you may find out that the highest-performing ads used less copy. That doesn’t mean that you should always use less copy. It just means that, for the average situation, it may be best.

Sometimes, long copy makes more sense. It’s great for the right audience. Use it for people who want to read. Use it to introduce something that people may not know about.

Short copy may be ideal in the case of an audience already knowing about your product or service. They only need to know about the deal.

This is where Dynamic Creative, Multiple Text Options, and Facebook’s A/B testing allow you to test this out.

18. Creative Types

Which image should you use? Should it include a face? Bright colors? Or should you use a video? And how long should the video be?

Oh, goodness. So many questions.

Different images appeal to different people. Know your audience.

Long videos have the benefit of educating your audience. If someone sticks around for the entire video, they are a warm lead. Short videos can get the attention of your audience quickly and get your message across.

They all have a purpose. Test them out by creating multiple ads or by using Dynamic Creative or A/B testing.

Be Mindful of Generating Meaningful Results

Look, the possibilities are endless, as you can see. It is very easy to be overwhelmed by the limitless options and features.

Start simple.

Before you completely understand what you’re doing, use defaults. Facebook makes it about as easy as they can to create a campaign that might work without knowing what you’re doing. Just don’t mess with things if you don’t have to.

Also understand the importance of volume. Don’t create a whole bunch of options if you don’t spend the budget or won’t generate the volume to lead to meaningful results.

Experiment. Try new things. But create options within reason. Otherwise, you’ll only succeed at creating a messy campaign that doesn’t really tell you anything.

My Experiment

As I said at the top, I love creating experiments. I just started one last week, and it’s possible you’ve been seeing some of the ads.

The main goal of my experiment is to create ads that both reward my loyal audience and incentivize additional engagement. I’ll do this with micro-targeted audiences. I also want to see how small I can go with these audiences.

Ultimately, I want to figure out what my most engaged — and reachable — audience is. And I want to reward them with exclusive content.

For now, this is built around Reach optimization and a special type of Website Custom Audience. I’ve created audiences based on frequency of page views.

My first ad starts broad, targeting those who have viewed two pages or more of my website during the past 30 days (I eventually move to 180 days). But with each ad, I tighten up the audience. If I stick with frequency, I’ll keep climbing until Facebook no longer delivers the ads.

Of course, how I’m doing this is pretty darn complicated. Since it’s an experiment, I’m also adjusting on the fly as results come in.

How can you participate? Well, reading this blog post is a good start! The more pages of my website you view, the more likely it is you’ll see these ads.

One favor: Engage with the ads and let me know you’re seeing them! I’d love to hear what you think.

Watch Video

Your Turn

What kind of experiments do you like to run with Facebook ads?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post A Facebook Ads Experimentation Guide appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

Facebook’s ads optimization systems are powerful. They have a ridiculous amount of data they can use to make sure that the right people who are most likely to act will see your ad. But while powerful, there are some inherent problems.

This doesn’t mean that Facebook ads optimization is bad. It means that there are some specific circumstances and settings you should watch out for, if not avoid.

In this post, let’s talk about how Facebook ads optimization works, the scenarios that could create problems, and the ways you can mitigate them.

How Facebook Ads Optimization Works

It’s important that you understand how Facebook ads optimization works. Once you understand how optimization functions, you will begin to predict the potential pitfalls.

While you set an initial “pool” audience in the ad set, Facebook knows that some of the people within that audience are more likely than others to perform your desired action. Facebook will try harder to reach those individuals while avoiding those more likely to result in a wasted impression.

The “desired action” is key. Some people are more likely to click, others more likely to view a video, and still others more likely to convert. All of these audiences and qualities are different.

At the bottom of your ad set, you choose the action you want Facebook to optimize for.

Per Facebook:

Choose the event you want to optimize for in your ad set. Your selection affects who sees your ads to get you the desired outcome. For example, if you choose to optimize for link clicks, we’ll show your ad to the people most likely to click your link.

The pool of people changes depending on your optimization event. This is important. In theory: Optimize correctly, get more desired actions and save money on waste.

Facebook Doesn’t Care About Quality

Let’s think about how Facebook’s automated systems can be misled. In the case of most actions, Facebook doesn’t care about quality. They only care about getting you the most of these desired actions for the lowest cost.

Some people click a lot. Some people comment and like a lot. Videos may hang up in a person’s news feed more than others.

Take a look at the engagement on your ads. Do you ever get angry reactions? Do you get people who complain about seeing your ads in their news feed? Do you get spam or worthless comments?

Guess what? This is all engagement! If you optimize for engagement, these are people who are likely in the pool of desirable people to reach. Facebook will see this engagement as being successful since engagement is what you asked for.

Some people click ads. Sometimes people click them by mistake. Some have terrible internet speeds and the page fails to load. There are also fake profiles and bots that click on things to appear real.

Take a look at the visit quality from your ads in Google Analytics. How long do they spend on your website? Do they immediately abandon?

Facebook sees all of these clicks and visits as being equal. If you optimize for Link Clicks or Landing Page Views, Facebook will use these people in your pool of potential targets. And when they click, Facebook will see your ad as being successful.

Why? Because you told Facebook you wanted link clicks or landing page views. That’s what you got! Success!

But… You care about quality.

Quality Matters

Of course, you want quantity AND quality. You definitely don’t want the lowest quality engagement. Luckily, there are some ways to mitigate it.

First, you can trust Facebook much more when optimizing for purchases, value, or conversion leads (someone who ultimately buys after a lead). These are difficult for Facebook to misunderstand and screw up.

I understand that you can’t necessarily optimize for purchases all the time. So, I want to give you some things to consider when assembling your campaigns that can help limit low-quality results.

Broad Targeting and Optimization

One of the biggest dangers to attracting low-quality results is using broad targeting for surface-level optimization like engagement, video views, and link clicks. Facebook will have no problem finding these actions, and you’ll probably get them cheaply.

Consider using tighter audiences for these optimization options. Target custom audiences, page followers, and precise interests.

Country Targeting

Most advertisers understand that bots and spam seem to come from some countries more than others. No country is immune, of course. It’s all a matter of balancing risk and reward.

Especially if you aren’t optimizing for a “quality” action, be selective about the countries you target. Otherwise, Facebook will simply find the cheapest clicks and engagement from the cheapest countries while potentially avoiding the countries where you get business.

Do some research to uncover where your paying customers come from. That should be your starting point.

You should also consider adjusting how Facebook targets people by location. By default, you will reach people who “Live in or were recently in” the countries you select.

While it may make sense for some businesses to target those who are traveling to and from a country, it may make more sense to focus only on those who live in the countries you’ve selected.

Placements

There’s only one placement I have strong negative feelings about, and that’s Audience Network. If you’re not familiar with this placement, it includes the apps and websites that monetize themselves with Facebook ads.

I’ve found Audience Network to be a huge source of accidental clicks and even click fraud (my account has been refunded several times due to Audience Network click fraud). If you’ve ever used an app and clicked on an ad by accident when it popped up unexpectedly, you understand how accidental clicks can happen.

It’s not that you should never use Audience Network as a placement. If you optimize for purchase conversions and you’re getting purchases from that placement, keep it. Because if those purchases don’t happen, Facebook will show ads to that placement less and less.

The problem I’ve seen is when optimizing for link clicks, landing page views, and engagement. Facebook will see those accidental clicks (and even click fraud) as satisfying your goals. If you ever run a traffic campaign with results that seem too good to be true, that may be because they are.

The reality is that this is how optimization is supposed to work! You asked for clicks. Facebook sees they can get you a lot of clicks within Audience Network. Suddenly, you start spending a big chunk of your budget within that placement, leading to more clicks. Facebook thinks they got you what you want.

You should check to see if the bulk of your budget is being moved to Audience Network. You can do this by using the Placement Breakdown.

Then check the quality of that traffic in Google Analytics.

Impact to Custom Audiences

Beyond generating misleading ad results, ignoring the inherent problems associated with Facebook ads optimization can lead to a watering down of your custom audiences.

If you indiscriminately run traffic ads that drive low-quality traffic, you will start building low-quality website custom audiences.

If you fail to mitigate issues related to low-quality engagement, you will start building low-quality page engagement custom audiences.

These are often go-to audiences for advertisers to target those who are closest to your brand and most likely to act. But, if you’re not careful, you will damage their effectiveness.

Traffic Alternatives

There is a solution to the traffic optimization problems. What we want is high-quality traffic. We want people who spend a lot of time on our website or scroll through the entire post. We want to avoid the accidental clicks and quick exits.

The solution is custom pixel events and optimizing for conversions.

I’ve created two different custom pixel events to track quality traffic (I created a blog post for each on how I set them up):

• Create Facebook Pixel Events for Time Spent
• Create Facebook Pixel Events for Scroll Depth

Instead of running a Traffic campaign that optimizes for link clicks or landing page views, I create a conversions campaign that optimizes for conversions (with a Quality Traffic Custom Event as the conversion event).

This makes sure that Facebook measures success by optimizing for and seeing more high-quality traffic visits. The result is that the cost per click will certainly be higher, but I’ll also generate more quality traffic.

Watch Video

Your Turn

I hope this post has helped you better understand how Facebook ads optimization works, the potential problems it can cause, and how you can mitigate those issues.

Have questions? Let me know in the comments below!

The post The Problems with Facebook Ads Optimization appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

One of the biggest Facebook advertiser complaints related to iOS 14 changes and Aggregated Event Measurement is the limitation to eight events per website for optimization purposes. Luckily, that is changing.

Let’s take a closer look at what the limitation meant, what happens with the change, and how this will impact your advertising.

The 8-Event Limit

When Aggregated Event Measurement was originally rolled out, advertisers were asked to provide a priority ranking of the eight pixel events they would use for ad set optimization.

Only these eight events would be allowed for optimization.

The ranking would be applied when collecting results from users who had opted out of iOS 14 tracking. In those cases, Facebook would only receive a user’s highest-ranking event, and receipt of that conversion would be delayed for up to 72 hours.

Problems Related to 8-Event Limit

Of course, there were many problems related to the 8-event limit. Those problems ranged from eight events not being enough to not being able to rank an event at all.

1. 8 Events Not Enough: Maybe you have dozens or hundreds of products. You may find success optimizing for the purchase of that specific product, rather than a standard Purchase event.

Or you may have a company that shares the same website across locations and departments. You don’t want to share the same eight events across those locations and departments.

2. Event Doesn’t Occur on Owned Website: This may be the most common. You have your own website, but the purchase itself occurs on a third-party domain that you don’t control. You can place your pixel on that website, but you can’t rank an event occurring there since you aren’t able to verify the domain (among other potential issues like sharing that event among other vendors).

Solution: Optimize for Non-Prioritized Events

Luckily, advertisers will now be allowed to optimize for events that are not included within their ranked eight (this feature is rolling out, and you may not have access to it yet).

There will be limitations to this approach that you’ll need to understand, but optimizing for non-prioritized events might be a great option for you.

Targeting Limitations for Non-Prioritzed Events

When optimizing for a non-prioritized event, your ad will not reach anyone on an iOS device who has opted out of tracking. That means that you WILL reach the following people:

• Those on iOS device who opted in to tracking
• Those on a non-iOS device

Keep in mind that this means you can also reach people who opted out of iOS tracking but are using a non-iOS device when your ad is shown.

The question is going to be how much this impacts your audience pool. If most of your traffic comes from non-iOS devices, this may be a great option. Even if you have a large iOS audience, it may be interesting to test.

Reporting Benefits of Non-Prioritized Events

The really interesting benefit of optimizing for non-prioritized events is that you won’t have to worry about reporting issues related to Aggregated Event Measurement.

As you know, AEM means reporting for users who opted out of tracking will be delayed and aggregated. It will take up to 72 hours to receive. You will only receive the highest ranking event. And other reporting may be modeled. This is a very inexact science. The uncertainty is frustrating.

But, what if you could get “normal,” pre-iOS 14 reporting? That’s essentially what happens when you optimize for a non-prioritized event. Reporting will be complete. Aggregated Event Measurement won’t apply.

Experiment!

Let’s see how this works. If you don’t have room in your ranked eight or simply have no ability to rank a given event, optimize for it as a non-prioritized event.

I’d take it a step further. Even if you don’t have these limitations, let’s try it anyway. Personally, I’m curious about the results we’ll see for non-prioritized event optimization vs. prioritized event optimization. Create a custom conversion, don’t rank it, and try to optimize for it.

Assuming you’re able to do this (not everyone has it so far), what results do you see?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post Campaign Optimization Using Non-Prioritized Facebook Events appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

When you run a campaign, how does Facebook decide who sees your ads and who doesn’t? The audience you select is just the start. Facebook optimization for ad delivery ultimately determines which people your ads reach.

In this post, we’ll talk about the following:

• The confusion about your ad audience
• How Facebook optimization works
• Optimization and objectives
• Optimization and the Learning Phase

Let’s do this…

No, You Can’t Reach Everyone

Many advertisers — particularly new ones — misunderstand how Facebook determines who sees your ads. You define your audience in the ad set…

The assumption among some advertisers is that the only obstacle to reaching a high percentage — if not all — of those people is budget. But, it’s just not true.

Throw all the budget at that ad set that you want. You won’t reach all of those people. Your audience selection is only the first step. Ultimately, you don’t want to reach everyone in that audience (in most cases).

How Facebook Optimization Works

Facebook optimization is meant to help you. While you set an initial “pool” audience, Facebook knows that some of the people within that audience are more likely than others to perform your desired action. As a result, Facebook will try harder to reach those quality individuals while avoiding those more likely to result in a wasted impression.

Of course, the “desired action” is key. Some people are more likely to click, others more likely to view a video, and still others more likely to convert. All of these audiences and qualities are different.

You choose this desired action by selecting a Performance Goal within your ad set.

Per Meta:

Your performance goal is how you measure success for your ads. For example, if your goal is to maximize the volume of purchases and you want your average CPA to be about $5, Meta will look for the best opportunities to reach that goal.

The pool of people changes depending on your optimization event. This is important.

Facebook has a ton of data for more than a decade of activity. The more people who use Facebook, the more data Facebook has. The more advertisers optimize for individual events, the more Facebook can tweak their algorithms. And a big part of all of this is the Facebook pixel, which helps define user activity on a website.

In theory: Optimize correctly, get more desired actions and save money on waste.

Optimization and Objectives

The optimization options available to you for a given campaign will depend upon the objective that you set at the campaign level. This is all meant to streamline the process and simplify it for the advertiser.

Following are the optimization options by objective…

Awareness

• Reach
• Ad Recall Lift
• Impressions
• ThruPlay Views
• 2-Second Continuous Video Views

Traffic

• Landing Page Views
• Link Clicks
• Daily Unique Reach
• Conversations
• Impressions
• Calls

Engagement

• Page Likes
• ThruPlay Views
• 2-Second Continuous Video Views
• Conversations
• Conversions
• Landing Page Views
• Link Clicks
• Daily Unique Reach
• Impressions
• App Events

Leads

• Leads
• Conversion Leads
• Conversions
• Landing Page Views
• Link Clicks
• Daily Unique Reach
• Impressions
• Calls
• App Events
• Conversations

App Promotion

• App Installs
• Value of Conversions (from app events)
• App Events
• Link Clicks

Sales

• Conversions
• Value of Conversions
• Landing Page Views
• Link Clicks
• Daily Unique Reach
• Impressions
• App Events
• Calls

If you are motivated to optimize a certain way that isn’t consistent with the objective that you’re using, pick a different objective!

You Get What You Optimize For

You need to fully understand what’s important to your business. Do not get lost in vanity or fluff metrics. You can get burned by optimization.

The most valuable possible user is someone who will buy from you. It’s difficult to dispute that.

All other actions are at least somewhat susceptible to algorithm manipulation. Let’s think about that…

If you optimize for link clicks, Facebook will show your ad to people most likely to click.

In this case, the algorithm doesn’t care about anything else. Facebook doesn’t care whether those users join your email list or buy from you. Facebook doesn’t even care whether they spent a single second on your website. The only concern is that they showed your ad to someone who performed your desired action.

That means that Facebook is going to show you results that the algorithm may think are successful. You got lots of clicks! Hurray! Facebook thinks you’ll be happy, too, since that’s what you said you wanted.

This spills over into placement selection. If you optimize for link clicks or landing page views, some placements (Audience Network, in particular) are much more susceptible to bots and click fraud than others. That means Facebook may then focus your budget to get those supposedly desired actions.

This can be an issue for virtually any action other than a purchase — even leads and other free “conversions” can be susceptible to low-quality traffic and bots.

My point isn’t that this is all a disaster. It’s not. Just make sure to do all you can to measure value and move beyond the surface level action.

Optimization and the Learning Phase

To properly optimize and get you the best results, Facebook needs volume. Facebook learns from early activity on your ads to tweak and optimize who sees your ads going forward.

Once you publish your campaign, ad delivery begins in the “Learning Phase.”

Theoretically, your campaign will perform better (optimally) once Facebook learns from early activities, you exit the learning phase, and your ad set is fully optimized.

The biggest obstacle to exiting the learning phase, however, is volume. Generally speaking, if you are unable to collect 25-50 optimized events during a seven day period, Facebook won’t be able to properly optimize. Your ad set will then display as “Learning Limited.”

Now, “Learning Limited” isn’t necessarily a death sentence. Many advertisers have reported getting acceptable results even after getting this message.

But know that volume helps Facebook optimize. It puts you in a better position to get the best possible results.

There are three primary drivers to getting this optimal volume:

• Audience Size
• Cost Per Optimization Event
• Budget

Let’s use an extreme when it comes to audience size and say you’re targeting an audience of 100 people. When Facebook optimizes for an event, your ad may be shown to 20 or 30 people. It doesn’t matter what you spend, you just won’t reach more people. And, if you can’t reach more people, you won’t get the necessary number of optimization events.

Similarly, your cost per conversion event could be as low as $.01 for something like engagement or video views but hundreds of dollars for a high-priced product or lead for a luxury item. You may be able to get the necessary optimization volume for low-priced events with a low budget, while it may be much more challenging to budget enough to get that volume if it costs $200 per event.

That leads us to budget. You may simply need to spend a little more to get that necessary volume, depending on the optimization event.

Optimization Options

But, maybe you don’t have that budget flexibility. The alternative is to optimize for something else that will lead to more volume at the same budget. The hope is that these events will continue to lead to the event you ultimately desire.

For example, instead of a purchase, you can optimize for an Add to Cart or View Content pixel event. These are things that happen more often, and it will cost less to get them. They are also actions your desired audience will perform prior to converting.

You also may run into a situation where you want to target your highest-value audience to complete a conversion. For example, you want to target those who hit a product landing page or added to cart without converting. That audience will be small for most websites, making it unlikely you’ll get enough volume to exit the learning phase.

What I’ve done in these cases is optimize for Reach or Daily Unique Reach. Here, you want to reach as many of the people in that audience as possible. There’s an assumption that all who performed this action are equally valuable — or close to equally valuable. In this rare situation, we don’t want Facebook to optimize, picking and choosing whom to reach. These optimization options will allow you to reach a larger percentage of that small audience.

Your Turn

I hope this post helps clarify how Facebook optimization for ad delivery works. Do you have any examples of how you use optimization?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post How Facebook Optimization for Ad Delivery Works appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

It’s definitely that time of year. You’ve done so much brainstorming, preparing, and worrying about your Q4 campaigns and now you feel fried. You wake up every morning poised for disaster.

Perhaps one or all of these thoughts races through your head: “something doesn’t seem to be working as well as it was last week,” “accounts aren’t spending what they should be right now,” or “my campaigns are tanking, the client is going to fire us.” 

But wait… as Michael Scott from Dunder Mifflin would say, are we really at threat level midnight?!

In all honesty, probably not, but that doesn’t mean your campaigns couldn’t use some tweaking and fine-tuning. Every account needs a 100,000-mile tune-up. NOW is the time to make sure all the hard work you’ve done to prepare for a successful Q4 isn’t lost thanks to overthinking, disorganization, and pulling random levers just to see what works and what doesn’t.

Remember: YOU GOT THIS.

What it really comes down to is understanding where and when to begin optimizing. What’s the most pressing issue? Or are there multiple things at play? Is it your audience, your creative, your bids or your website?

In truth, it could be a combination of a few different problem areas. Facebook has been more volatile lately, and for many advertisers, it’s difficult to pinpoint what’s causing the mixed results.

To get clear answers moving forward, you need to institute a tried-and-true system of optimization and organization.

Definitions

Most Facebook advertisers have their own system of optimization and organization, but in my experience, “system” is a loosely defined term. For example, optimization to one advertiser I spoke to recently was “turning ad sets up or down”, where to me, optimization is the definition below.

Optimization: Increasing yield (results) and cutting waste. Optimization is a continued refinement of your currently active ads. It’s slightly different than overall account scaling in that it’s more tweaking and tuning what is currently active to run more smoothly.

Account organization also has different definitions depending on the advertiser. One advertiser I know recently said, “my audiences are named properly in the audiences area, so I feel pretty organized.” This technically isn’t wrong, but I prefer the more overarching definition below.

Organization: Instituting orderly systems and processes so you don’t get confused and lost while running Facebook and Instagram ads. Examples include using better naming conventions, relying on a go-to build template, and much more.

Your System

If you’ve never defined your optimization/organization system, NOW is the time.

Facebook is much more competitive than it was last year and exponentially harder to work within. In order to stay sane, you need a clear, dedicated system. This system should help you stay on track for what you should be doing every day, week, and month to improve your account performance. The days of scattershot optimization and tweaks are over.

For my system, I start by thinking through the following ground rules…

Generally, my ground rules surround:

• What are the pitch(es) I’m making and where?
• Who am I showing ads to?
• Where am I placing ads?
• What types of ads am I running?
• What bidding methodologies am I using?
• How much am I spending and do I want to spend more?

By going through and recording my answers to these questions on a more regular basis, I am able to come up with new ideas, thanks to fresh thinking.

What about you? What questions are you routinely asking yourself about your account performance? Or are you keeping things on auto-pilot? Why or why not?

My System

To put these ground rules into practice, I developed a straightforward list of DAILY-WEEKLY-MONTHLY optimization metrics that I think work well, regardless of account size. I build these out as reports that I pull down via the Customize Columns area and then I save them. Here are the exact steps I follow:

First, I select customize columns.

Then I select the metrics I want to track.

Then, once it’s done, I save it and name it.

Is this rocket science? No. But has it been helpful in my account optimization system? Yes, absolutely. 

I use this system for all my ad accounts, with each one utilizing a daily, weekly, and monthly list to identify further optimization areas.

My Daily Optimizations

Here’s how I approach DAILY account optimization and what I’m keeping an eye on:

• Amount spent
• Results
• Reach
• Cost Per Result
• Budget
• Website Purchases
• Cost Per Website Purchase
• Website Purchase Conversion Value
• Website Purchase ROAS (return on ad spend)
• Link Clicks
• Cost per Link Click
• CTR (Link)

I pull out these metrics and save them as a daily report, which I then run for each client. I compare yesterday versus today using the date picker.

Here are the account optimization questions I ask myself on a DAILY basis:

• Is my CPA going up/down?
• Is my CTR going up/down?
• Is my CPC going up/down?
• Do any of the ad sets show signs of fatigue?

It’s basically a quick checkup on big picture campaign components. Am I successfully bringing in more traffic at a reasonable cost and is that traffic producing revenue? After I do my daily optimizations, I dive into weekly optimizations.

My Weekly Optimizations

Now, here’s how I approach WEEKLY account optimization. Notice the additional levers I’m pulling? I’m keeping an eye on all these issues:

• Reach
• Cost Per Result
• Website Purchases
• Cost Per Purchase
• Website Purchase Conversion Value
• Website Purchase ROAS
• Link Clicks
• Cost Per Link Click
• CTR (Link)
• CPM
• Relevance Score
• First time impression ratio check on ad sets
• Check on creative, bidding, placement or audience gaps that need to be filled

Here are the questions I’m asking myself on a WEEKLY basis:

• Am I driving more conversions / leads at the same or different cost?
• Is my CPA going up/down?
• Is my Relevance Score going up/down?
• Do any of the ad sets show signs of fatigue?
• Am I seeing a lot of latent conversions not previously counted over the last 7 days?

My Monthly Optimizations

Lastly, here’s how I approach MONTHLY account optimization. See all the items I’m reviewing in-depth?

• Website Purchases
• Cost Per Purchase
• Website Purchase Conversion Value
• Website Purchase ROAS
• Link Clicks
• Landing Page Views
• Cost Per Link Click
• CTR (Link)
• CPM
• Relevance Score
• First time impression ratio check on ad sets
• Check on creative, bidding, placement or audience gaps that need to be filled
• Latent conversions month over month
• A/B bidding check to see comparisons

Now, here are the questions I’m asking myself on a MONTHLY basis:

• Am I driving more conversions at the same or different cost?
• Am I driving more/same amount of traffic at the same/different cost?
• Is my CPA going up/down?
• What’s wearing out?
• What’s new that needs to be tested?
• What worked this month and what didn’t?
• What “gaps” have shown that we can run tests on tests can next month?

System Sneak Peek

This is just a sneak peek at the optimization/organization system I use to keep my accounts running smoothly. Over the past month, I interviewed over a dozen Facebook advertising pros including reps at big ad agencies, in-house marketers, and other consultants — all of whom work in different verticals with diverse client needs — to hear from them on what EXACTLY they’re doing on the account optimization and organization front.

Your Turn

What systems do you use for account optimization and organization?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post Facebook Account Optimization and Organization Techniques appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

If you’ve been reading these pages for long, you know that my Facebook advertising strategy is focused on targeting those who are closest to me. I decided to take myself outside of this comfort zone recently, and it led me to a better understanding of a major problem with Facebook ads optimization.

Let’s take a closer look at that experiment and how I used current data to solve the problem…

The Experiment

I run 15 Facebook ad campaigns for each stage of the funnel:

1. Traffic
2. List Building
3. Sales

Up until recently, I mostly avoided interest and Lookalike Audience targeting, even at the top of the funnel.

I could do this because I have a large audience of people who visit my website. The success rate when targeting this group of people provides little motivation to expand beyond it.

But if I would use such “cold” audiences, it would be at the top of the funnel. In theory, I could spend more to target people who don’t (but possibly should) know me with helpful content, slowly bringing them through to eventually register and buy.

One place in particular where this could be helpful was when promoting my content for entrepreneurs. I don’t have as large of an audience on that topic as I do for Facebook ads. So I could spend more money while targeting interests to introduce these people to my content. And if successful, I may even try to go straight for an opt-in.

With the help of Audience Insights, I isolated a group of entrepreneurship interests to target when promoting a blog post that may appeal to that group. To help uncover which would be most effective for my audience, I broke them into separate ad sets.

• 4-Hour Workweek interest
• Gary Vaynerchuk interest
• Marie Forleo interest
• Tim Ferriss interest
• Other “general” entrepreneurship interests

The Results

It didn’t take long to find a clear top performer. Following are the costs per link click for each ad set (remember that my goal with this campaign was driving traffic):

• 4-Hour Workweek interest: $.25
• Gary Vaynerchuk interest: $.06
• Marie Forleo interest: $.16
• Tim Ferriss interest: $.31
• Other “general” entrepreneurship interests: $.14

Those Gary Vaynerchuk results were insane. The cost was even better than what it costs me when targeting people who visit my website and read an entrepreneur post (tends to be between $.10 – $.20).

Maybe I struck gold here. Maybe there’s something to this audience. So I also targeted this interest when promoting a free video series for entrepreneurs with a Facebook lead ad.

The results were startling. I quickly got 593 leads at $.29 per lead.

That cost was so good that it was half of the cost I am getting when targeting my readers of entrepreneur posts ($.58) — and that cost is pretty freaking good, too.

This discovery shook me and everything that I thought I knew about Facebook advertising.

Too Good to Be True?

A part of me knew to be skeptical from the start. This doesn’t make sense. But another part of me wanted so badly for it to be true that I tried to ignore it.

Finally, I dug deeper. Something just isn’t right here. Could these results be too good to be true?

The one thing that I wanted to check was geography. Where are the people from who are registering for this video series? Is it consistent with the geography of those who visit my website, subscribe, and ultimately buy?

The short answer: Uh oh…

Using the Breakdown feature within Facebook ad reports, I was able to uncover where these registrations were coming from.

Here’s a look at the top 12 countries:

There are four countries in particular that are missing from this list. I typically see high volume of traffic from the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia. So, how many registrations are from those countries?

• United States: 0
• United Kingdom: 0
• Canada: 0
• Australia: 0

Not a single registration from those countries. But it’s not because the people in these countries weren’t converting. Facebook wasn’t even trying.

The highest spend for these four countries came from the United States, at a grand total of $.21. Not a particularly solid sample size.

This was alarming, to say the least. This also coincided with a higher volume of spam to these ads than is typical. Way higher.

Typically, I would have greater faith in conversion results. However, we’re dealing with Facebook lead ads here, and one weakness of that ad unit is that it’s insanely easy to convert.

However, I also don’t like to be too presumptuous regarding where my customers may come from. I decided to dig deeper to uncover where people are from who visit my website, register for something, and buy a product.

Maybe more people from these countries are buying from me than I think. It’s possible that this is a time to re-think everything.

Who Is Visiting My Website?

By far, the largest chunk of my traffic comes from the United States, at 30.1%. Here are the only countries that represent at least 4% of my website traffic:

• United States: 30.1%
• United Kingdom: 7.6%
• India: 6.2%
• Australia: 4.1%
• Canada: 4.1%

At this point, the inclusion of India in my conversion results isn’t completely crazy, but the exclusion of the other four countries certainly would be a head-scratcher.

Who is On My Email List?

It’s also possible that the composition of those who visit my website and are on my email list is different. So let’s take a closer look at that, too.

Interestingly enough, the composition of email subscribers isn’t much different…

• United States: 31%
• India: 8%
• United Kingdom: 6%
• Australia: 5%
• Canada: 4%

I can’t help but think that this campaign also padded these numbers a tad for India.

Who Are My Customers?

The end goal is to get sales, after all. So I want to see if I’m wasting my time with people from particular countries who subscribe to free content.

Here are the only countries representing at least 4% of my sales:

• United States: 52.9%
• Australia: 9.0%
• United Kingdom: 8.9%
• Canada: 5.7%

My audience from the United States is far more likely to buy from me. Interesting.

But what happened to India? Registrants from India make up 8% of my email list. Yet, only 1.2% of purchases is composed of customers from this country.

If you’re curious about the other countries that represented registrations for that test ad set, here you go:

• Nigeria: 0.1%
• Pakistan: 0.1%
• Philippines: 0.1%
• Malaysia: 0.8%
• Bangladesh: 0.0%
• Indonesia: 0.5%
• Egypt: 0.1%
• Morocco: 0.1%
• Ghana: 0.0%
• Kenya: 0.0%
• Nepal: 0.0%

The 12 countries that made up 74% of my registrations for this ad set make up a total of 3% of my sales.

Of the countries above, India is the only one that represents a reasonable amount of traffic. But even in that case, those who visit from India are far less likely to purchase.

Here’s a comparison of purchase to visit ratios for India, along with the other top traffic countries:

• Australia: .10 purchase vs. visit ratio
• United States: .09
• United Kingdom: .06
• Canada: .06
• India: .01

In other words, a visitor from Australia is 10X more likely to purchase than a visitor from India. Even in the case of Canada and the United Kingdom, that rate is 6X higher.

The Problem With Facebook Ads Optimization

Facebook’s goal when optimizing for leads is to get the most leads for the lowest price.

Quality is not part of the algorithm. Only cost and volume.

This may be less of an issue for a conversion that results in a sale. The value of those conversions is much more clear and obvious.

This may also be less of a factor when remarketing. Assuming, of course, that the bulk of your traffic and email list isn’t built on an audience that resulted from a campaign like this one, your results should be more controlled.

SIDE NOTE: All the more reason to focus primarily on remarketing if you can.

But when targeting interests and lookalike audiences, in particular, Facebook will naturally focus on clicks (when optimizing for traffic) and leads (when optimizing for leads) for the lowest cost. And those lowest cost leads and clicks, for me, come from countries that do not typically lead to sales.

How to Fix This

The fix should be quite obvious: We need to filter using countries that tend to be most productive for our business.

For me, it’s the four countries mentioned earlier (United States, United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia). However, I’ve also added countries that have a .05 purchase-to-visit ratio while also providing decent volume.

I updated my ad sets to only include these countries. The results, as you can imagine, are quite different.

The cost per website click for the ad set promoting a blog post to the Gary Vaynerchuk audience went up from $.06 to $.32. Obviously, not nearly as effective — and a cost that wouldn’t be worthwhile for me.

The cost per lead for that same audience increased from $.29 to $1.79. While that rate is significantly higher than targeting my website visitors, it’s at least within the right ballpark to watch it for a while longer.

Your Turn

This experiment provides a couple of primary lessons:

1) Be skeptical of results that appear to be too good to be true. Dig deeper.

2) Don’t assume anything. Research customer composition to better understand your results.

Anything you’d add here?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post Geography and the Problem with Facebook Ads Optimization appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

One of the primary reasons marketers run Facebook ads is for conversions. They are trying to sell a product or build an email list.

Facebook ads, of course, aren’t magical. Many advertisers are disappointed when they run campaigns that don’t yield the expected results. They assume it’s easy. They assume that once they start the campaign, the money will roll in.

While not magical, Facebook ads are powerful. They are an amazing tool to help brands reach their ideal audience with a message. Facebook doesn’t force users to convert.

Many advertisers ask me, “Why didn’t this campaign lead to conversions?” My answer is typically a shrug. There is a long list of reasons why that campaign didn’t work out.

I wrote this post to help answer such a question. Here are nine major factors that need to be understood and split-tested for optimal results.

And by “results,” note that I’m focusing on Cost Per Conversion. That is the one KPI that matters in this case — not CPC or CTR, for example. Your focus is on the cost per desired action.

[Tweet “There are nine main factors that impact the cost per conversion of Facebook ads…”]

1. Product

Let’s face it, the product needs to be first. You could create the perfect campaign. It could have eye-catching imagery, convincing copy and a slick landing page. But none of that matters if the product sucks.

The perfect campaign can’t fix a flawed product. This is the most often missed explanation for disappointing results. Marketers often refuse to consider that maybe — just maybe — their product isn’t all that interesting.

2. Audience

The product may be most important, but audience is close behind. You can run the perfect campaign for the perfect product, but it won’t convert unless it reaches the right people.

Understand that there is likely a large audience of people at various stages of willingness to convert. You can’t hit them all with the hard sell.

See your potential audience like this:

Those Who Don’t Know You But Have Relevant Interests

When targeting these people, most will ignore your ad. They don’t know enough about you or your product yet to trust you. Some will have interest. Of those who have interest, a small percentage will be willing to buy.

You need to understand that those who have interest but aren’t ready to buy have value. Reach them with the right message.

Those Who Know You But Haven’t Bought From You

There is an important group of people who have visited your website, like your Facebook page or are on your email list. They already know enough about you to form an opinion — hopefully positive. While you have a reputation, these people haven’t yet used your product.

As a result, a larger percentage of this group will have interest. A larger percentage will be willing to buy.

Still, you need to understand that many simply aren’t ready yet. They need to be nurtured.

Those Who Have Bought From You Before

The smallest, though most valuable, group of people. They know who you are. They’ve bought from you. As a result, they are likely to have a strong opinion about your brand and your product.

A very large percentage of this group — if they’ve had a positive experience with your product — is likely to have some interest. Message them with the understanding that they know your product. Leverage that.

It’s important to message these groups differently — they are not created equal.

3. Copy

Sometimes long copy works. Sometimes short copy works. There is no universal right and wrong here, but know that it impacts the performance of your campaign.

Your audience should also help determine your copy. Should it be conversational or professional? Slang or no slang?

If your ad copy includes bad grammar and misspellings, don’t expect it to perform. Of course, your audience matters here, but this will almost always result in a bad impression.

Little things like ALL CAPS or Capitalizing Each Word Of Your Copy can impact performance. I’d say using either technique will typically result in negative performance, but that’s not a guarantee.

And finally, your copy should work to convince the user to perform the action you want them to perform. That could be a hard sell or a soft sell. It could mean using calls to action. But ultimately your job is to entice the user to click and convert.

When it comes to copy, you need to split test to find what works best for you and your audience.

4. Imagery

There are some things that are easy. Use my dimensions infographic to make sure that the image sizes you use are appropriate. Link thumbnails should use a 1.91:1 aspect ratio to stretch across the width of news feed.

Quality will be important. Is it fuzzy? Is it easy to read? Does it make any sense? Does it grab the user’s attention?

Beyond that, there are many questions to ask regarding imagery. Should you feature one face or multiple faces? Should you feature your product or logo? Should you use a professional photo, candid or stock imagery (usually no stock imagery!)? Should you use bright and bold colors or something softer or darker?

I have my personal preferences, but these are things that must be split tested.

5. Post Type

If you run a campaign with the objective of a conversion, I will almost always recommend that your ad be a link share. Any click on the thumbnail or description will lead to your landing page, which is where you want them.

Of course, some marketers will swear by the photo share post type with a link in the description. While some often follow the wrong metrics when boasting success (focusing on engagement), this isn’t always the case. Particularly for very visual products (like fashion), photo shares should be tested.

And you also should consider the video share. Particularly given the availability of the call-to-action button, videos can also be very successful.

6. Landing Page

You’ve done everything perfectly so far. Great product, great ad. But if your landing page sucks, forget about it!

Your landing page could be the problem for any number of reasons…

1. It doesn’t follow through on your ad’s promise
2. The copy is too long or short
3. It sells too hard or not enough
4. It is confusing
5. It doesn’t look professional
6. It doesn’t have a clear call-to-action
7. It isn’t optimized for mobile devices
8. It asks for too much information
9. A conversion is too difficult and requires too many steps
10. The design and layout aren’t optimal

Advertisers who create nearly perfect campaigns will often blame Facebook for poor results when the problem can often be traced to the landing page.

7. Social Proof

If other people — particularly those you know — like or endorse something, you’re more likely to buy it. On the flip side, you’re less likely to buy if that product is receiving a negative response.

Social proof comes in many forms, but one that is visible within your ad is the comments.

No Comments: Neutral, but lots of unanswered questions.

Positive Comments: Could lead to more conversions.

Negative Comments: Could lead to fewer conversions.

The comments are easy for advertisers to miss because they are difficult to manage. But running ad sets to the same ad (published or unpublished post) will help consolidate comments. This not only makes moderation of those comments easier, but can improve perception if your ad gets positive feedback.

8. Optimization

If you are running a campaign for conversions, I’ll almost always recommend that you optimize for conversions. But that is a starting point, and as is the case with everything on Facebook it isn’t a universal rule.

When you optimize for an action, Facebook needs a decent sample size to work with. This makes sense as they need to see as many people as possible who have converted so that they can find others like them.

As a rule of thumb, I’ve often heard that it’s best to have at least 50 conversions per day in order to get an acceptable sample size and optimize for conversions. Again, it’s not a universal rule — I’ve had success optimizing for conversions without hitting this number. But something to consider.

You can also choose to optimize for website clicks or engagement. In either case, Facebook will show your ad to people most likely to either click your link or click anywhere on the ad. That may not be your desired action (the conversion is), but just getting these people to your landing page can help lead to a conversion.

Note that optimization doesn’t stop at the action. You can also choose to optimize for impressions (CPM) or limit impressions to once per day per user (Daily Unique Reach). These two should be used almost exclusively for highly relevant audiences.

Optimizing for conversions will typically lead to the most conversions — since Facebook is showing your ad to people most likely to convert. But feel free to split test with other optimization approaches as well.

9. Placement

Many advertisers are scared of the sidebar. They assume it doesn’t work based on low CTR. Maybe the sidebar doesn’t work for you or your ad. But just make sure you’re looking at the right numbers when making this determination.

The truth is that this is fluid. Placement performance is influenced by many factors, but perhaps most important is competition. As competition goes up, the cost to reach people in that placement increases. As competition goes down, so does the cost.

During the past couple of years, universal costs have shifted repeatedly. It wasn’t long ago that mobile — while getting a high engagement rate — was the most expensive placement. It cost more to reach people there due to lower distribution and higher competition.

But many advertisers have now seen this switch. As users move away from desktop and to mobile devices, the inventory on desktop is decreasing while the competition is increasing. Meanwhile, more users on mobile combined with the addition of Audience Network results in more inventory and less competition.

The sidebar has seen major structural changes. Facebook previously showed up to seven sidebar ads at a time. This increased inventory while lowering cost and engagement. The number of sidebar ads was then cut to two, increasing engagement and costs while decreasing inventory. And now that number has been upped to three.

Don’t ever assume that one will always work or the other won’t work. Keep experimenting!

Your Turn

What other factors impact cost per conversion with Facebook ads?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post Facebook Ads: 9 Factors That Impact Cost Per Conversion appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.