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.

It’s a common problem. Meta advertisers, in search of the perfect combination of advertising strategies, overcomplicate things and make it worse. Several factors contribute to this problem.

First, we assume that “complicated” means “better” and “sophisticated.”

How could an Advantage+ Shopping Campaign with no targeting inputs and one ad set perform better than my execution of a 10-step strategy with multiple campaigns, ad sets, and audience segmentations?

Second, our answer to fixing a campaign that isn’t working as we’d like is to tweak, add, and add some more. Duplicate the campaign, create a new ad set, try a new optimization, or target a new group.

It’s not that the simplest strategy is always the best. But, less complicated strategies provide more clarity. By simplifying, you aren’t driving up your costs by competing against yourself or restricting the algorithm. If something isn’t working as well as you’d like, the focus is on ad copy and creative, your offer, and your website.

Look, I was once the king of complicated strategies. My favorite thing to do was create complex Evergreen Campaigns that used 10 ad sets to move a very small number of people through an ad funnel. But, things have changed.

Some advertisers are stuck in the past. Others are frustrated with their results and are trying everything. And we listen to far too many “gurus” with complicated strategies that sound good because of their complexity.

Limit Unnecessary Complexity

Don’t take every recommendation in this post as gospel. There are too many factors that contribute to performance to decide that one human’s advice is best for everyone.

I’m not always right. Sometimes there’s nuance. And even my advice below should be taken as a general approach. I don’t want you to always do what I suggest. I just want you to think about these things.

Your main takeaway should be this: Make a conscious effort to limit unnecessary complexity.

“Complex” is rarely helpful. By adding more variables, you make it more difficult to understand what is working and what isn’t. You’re watering down your results. It’s difficult to know what you need to change to get things back on the right track.

Complexity can be created by adding campaigns or ad sets. It can result from micromanaging targeting or placements. It can even be found in testing your ad creative.

It’s not that you should never do these things. But, before you do, ask yourself whether it’s necessary. Is it truly helpful?

There are always exceptions to what I recommend below. It could be due to large budgets, specific company goals, or unique circumstances. I get it. Sometimes you can’t avoid it. But, understand why “simple” is often better.

Let’s discuss the main things that you can simplify…

1. Campaigns

I host regular one-on-ones and help clients think through their advertising. One of the first things I often see is an Ads Manager cluttered with a whole bunch of campaigns.

Campaigns for sales, leads, traffic, engagement, and awareness. Multiple campaigns for a single objective.

There are only two objectives that I would recommend are required for virtually every business:

1. Sales
2. Leads

If we really want to simplify things, an Advantage+ Shopping Campaign is often the best way to run a sales campaign. No targeting and one ad set. All of the focus is on your ads.

Regardless, focus on sales and leads — or on conversions of some kind. Everything else is extra and needs a good business reason for doing it. Top of funnel objectives are rarely worth the money because Meta doesn’t have a way to optimize for quality traffic or engagement. Instead, you’ll typically get a bunch of empty clicks.

Save the money you were going to use on those top of funnel campaigns and push them towards leads or sales. You will build awareness, engagement, and traffic incidentally with those campaigns.

Also make sure you actually need the multiple sales or leads campaigns before you create them. If you have specific business goals, multiple campaigns can be difficult to get around.

Just remember that the more campaigns you create, the more ad sets you create. And that can eventually become problematic, in the form of Auction Overlap, which can drive up your costs.

2. Ad Sets

This is connected to limiting your number of campaigns, but also not. If you create 20 campaigns, that’s at least 20 ad sets. That, by itself, could be a problem.

But, you could also have two campaigns that each house 10 ad sets. Maybe this is an exaggeration, but advertisers do it. In most cases, it’s completely unnecessary.

If you create multiple ad sets to segment your audience, for example, you are contributing to Audience Fragmentation. This makes your ad spend less efficient.

You can’t always avoid creating that extra ad set. But, whenever possible, aim to consolidate.

3. Targeting

Since targeting is the primary motivator for advertisers who create multiple ad sets, this is a good transition.

Targeting may be the best example of how advertisers overcomplicate things. While it made sense in the past, it almost never does now.

If you’re optimizing for some sort of conversion, you should use Advantage+ Audience (assuming you haven’t created an Advantage+ Shopping Campaign). Provide some audience suggestions and allow the algorithm to do its thing.

There’s no need to create multiple ad sets to test the use of different audience suggestions. Those suggestions are unlikely to be all that impactful anyway. They’re just a starting point. Once the audience expands, those multiple ad sets will be nothing but overlap.

If you prefer original audiences over Advantage+ Audience due to the perception of additional control, keep in mind that your targeting inputs are often expanded:

• Advantage Detailed Targeting and Advantage Lookalike are automatically on and can’t be turned off when optimizing for conversions
• Advantage Detailed Targeting is automatically on and can’t be turned off when optimizing for link clicks or landing page views

The audience is often expanding anyway.

Also, don’t assume that expansion is bad and needs to be avoided. While eliminating expansion can lead to good temporary results, it’s not scalable. You can’t, for example, keep targeting your email list and website visitors while spending $100 per day and expect to get good results beyond a short window.

Remarketing is mostly dead. First, the algorithm is smart enough now that it will automatically target people based on your conversion history, pixel data, and prior engagement with your ads. This is even the case when you don’t provide targeting inputs with Advantage+ Shopping or Advantage+ Audience.

I will still use my remarketing custom audiences as suggestions for Advantage+ Audience. Even then, I don’t know how much it matters. But, it gives me peace of mind that it’s at least starting with that group.

Simplify your targeting. Embrace the fact that your targeting inputs are far less impactful than they were in the past. Stop obsessing over isolating the perfect combination of demographics, detailed targeting, and lookalike audiences. Ditch creating multiple ad sets for the purpose of audience segmentation.

Don’t lose any sleep over it. This is a good thing because it allows you to focus on your copy and creative.

4. Budget

All of these things are related.

The vast majority of advertisers have a finite budget. You can’t spend more than a certain amount per day or month.

And yet, you’re spreading that budget across a cluttered list of campaigns and ad sets — many of which are unnecessary. You complain about bad results and your inability to exit the learning phase. And the whole time, this problem is easily solvable.

Create fewer campaigns. Create fewer ad sets. But spend the same amount. Consolidate your budget that was spread across campaigns and ad sets into fewer targets.

This will give you the best chance of spending enough to help the algorithm learn and generate optimal results.

5. Performance Goals

Your performance goal may be the most important part of the campaign creation process.

I know, the ad copy and creative are incredibly important. But, great copy and creative may not overcome the wrong performance goal. If you use the right performance goal, mediocre ad copy and creative could still get you acceptable results.

The performance goal is exactly that: It defines what you are trying to accomplish. This helps Meta know how to deliver your ads and who should see them. It helps determine whether your ad set is working or underperforming and something needs to be corrected.

What’s crazy to me is that this shouldn’t be complicated, but advertisers love to complicate it.

As discussed earlier, your priority should be to optimize for conversions of some kind. You can set a performance goal to Maximize Conversions or Maximize Value of Conversions.

And then define what exact conversion type is most important to you. It could be purchases, leads, complete registrations, or potentially something else.

The algorithm will then focus on getting you those conversions. It wants to make you happy.

But, don’t get cute.

If you optimize for link clicks or landing page views, the algorithm will be focused on getting you link clicks or landing page views. They could be accidental clicks, bots (before detected), or people who click on everything. But, these people may not have any interest in your ad or your product.

If you optimize for ThruPlay, the algorithm will find ways to get people to watch at least 15 seconds of your video. That includes prioritizing placements where users are forced to watch video ads and can’t skip them. You assume these people cared about your video, so you create remarketing campaigns to target them. But, many didn’t care.

Keep it simple: Set a performance goal that defines exactly what you want.

This is the only way that you and Meta’s ad delivery algorithm will be on the same page. You can’t complain about low-quality traffic if you didn’t define you wanted high-quality traffic. You can’t complain about not getting purchases if you told the algorithm you wanted add to carts.

6. Bidding

The ad auction is dependent on three things:

1. Your bid
2. The likelihood that someone will engage with your ad
3. Ad quality

Unlike the typical auction, your bid isn’t everything. The highest bidder doesn’t necessarily get the impression. And really, you don’t want that to be why you win the auction anyway.

If you don’t touch anything, Meta bids for you. In most cases, it’s using the Highest Volume bid strategy. Meta’s focus will be to get you the highest volume of optimized actions within your budget. If you optimize for Value, the Highest Value bid strategy is default.

Otherwise, you can use a Cost Per Result Goal, ROAS Goal, or Bid Cap.

But, in most cases, don’t bother. You’re usually going to be disappointed. You’re not going to get magical results because you set a Cost Per Result Goal of $.01 and Meta unearths people willing to buy your product at a penny per purchase.

More often than not, your manual bidding will lead to spending less of your budget and getting fewer or worse results. It’s not that you should never try manual bidding. But, it should mostly be used as a last resort when you can’t get anything else to work.

7. Placements

If your only active ad sets are optimized for some sort of conversion, this is the easiest step possible. Do nothing. Keep your hands off and use Advantage+ Placements.

It’s not that there aren’t low-value placements. Audience Network is notorious for generating low-quality clicks and video views. But, if you’re optimizing for conversions, the algorithm knows about these pitfalls, too. You can bet that very little, if any, of your budget will be spent there.

Not, of course, unless that placement leads to conversions. And to be clear, impressions that don’t lead to a direct conversion can have value, too. One user may see three or five ads before finally converting. Some of those lower-performing (and lower-priced) placements may contribute.

Where you need to be careful is when optimizing for anything other than conversions. As we know, Audience Network leads to low-quality clicks. And since you can’t set a performance goal of high quality link clicks or landing page views, Meta will fill your results with those clicks if you set a performance goal of link clicks or landing page views.

A similar problem is found in Audience Network Rewarded Video when optimizing for ThruPlay. Third-party apps monetize themselves with Meta ads for this placement. People can watch videos in exchange for virtual currency that is used in the app. These people don’t care about your video.

Of course, there are other examples. But, this is another reason why optimizing for anything other than conversions is a complicated game of whack-a-mole. You need to do all you can to control quality, and that includes removing problematic placements.

But, again, that’s not an issue when optimizing for conversions. Keep it simple and use Advantage+ Placements.

8. Ad Copy and Creative

Ad copy and creative are super important. If they aren’t the most important part of your advertising, they’re at least in the discussion.

But, you don’t need to overdo this.

Meta says that there’s no benefit to creating more than six ads for a single ad set. And if your budget is low, even those six will chop up your budget to the point of making results mostly meaningless.

As I’m sure you know, the algorithm will pick one or a handful of those ads rather quickly and run with them. This isn’t because those ads were clearly more effective at a high level of certainty, it’s because the difference is negligible and the algorithm had to run with something.

Create multiple ads if you have multiple ad ideas. But, don’t feel you need to create six. And don’t obsess over the results and what they mean from small sample sizes.

Sometimes, it’s best to create two or three ads and run with them. Not getting great results? Fine. Create two or three more. It doesn’t matter that you restart the learning phase because you weren’t satisfied with your results anyway.

9. Testing

I don’t want to completely minimize testing because it can be helpful. But, I also see advertisers stuck in a constant cycle of A/B tests that barely move the needle.

Over-testing happens when you don’t trust anything that Meta does automatically. You feel the need to scientifically define absolute winning ads and optimizations.

But, the testing itself costs money. Performance is almost always worse when you force the algorithm to A/B split the audience. And you’re not guaranteed to get results that are statistically significant that would have made the test more productive than simply running the ads the old fashioned way.

Again, there are exceptions. If you’re going to run a long-term campaign, testing ads makes sense. And if you have big budgets, knock yourself out.

But, these low-budget tests to find winning creative are virtually meaningless. Just run the ads. Let the algorithm sort it out.

You can “test” without always needing to find a winner. Give the system multiple ads to work with. Utilize Dynamic Creative or the text variations feature.

Once again, complicating things with a test isn’t always the best path to profitability. Sometimes the simplest approach is the answer.

10. Reporting and Interpretation of Results

What’s a good CPC for this industry? Is this an acceptable CTR? Why is my CPM so high? How can I get it down?

Just stop…

Meta offers limitless metrics that can distract you. Many of them provide some value. But don’t obsess over the secondary metrics.

Keep it simple. Focus most on your goal action and the cost per goal action.

Not getting the cost per goal action that you’re wanting? The secondary metrics can help tell that story. Maybe your conversion rate is great, but the CPM is going up due to competition. Or maybe the CTR is lower than normal, indicating that you need to improve your offer to get people to click. Or those secondary metrics are all solid, but you aren’t getting conversions — so you shift your focus to the landing page.

Stop freaking out about every metric. They’re all part of the story. But, only a couple truly matter. The rest are window dressing.

Your Turn

How have you overcomplicated your ad strategy?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post A Simplified Meta Ads Strategy for Optimal Results appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

Today’s post is a bit on the experimental and hypothetical side. But it’s inspired by a very real problem that I see Meta advertisers make that can be fixed with a restructuring of the current campaign construction flow.

Redesigning the campaign flow is nothing new for Meta. It happens every few years, and it’s necessary. Meta is in a continual state of change, adding and tweaking features. This means that the feature set is different today than when things were last reorganized. That creates clutter.

And we have a whole lot of clutter. That clutter creates confusion.

The last time Meta redesigned campaign construction flow, it was with ODAX (Outcome-Driven Ad Experiences). The purpose was to simplify and consolidate campaign objectives, moving from 11 to six.

I don’t know that a drastic redesign is required of objectives. I will recommend trimming to five, but that’s not the biggest issue here.

The Problem with Performance Goals

The primary source of clutter comes from performance goals. It’s also what creates confusion.

The primary purpose of selecting a campaign objective is to declare what it is you are trying to accomplish. Which of these six things is your focus?

• Awareness
• Traffic
• Engagement
• Leads
• App Promotion
• Sales

Meta then streamlines the rest of the campaign creation process by removing certain options within the ad set. Your campaign objective helps determine which conversion locations and performance goals are available, for example.

It would be logical to assume that all of the performance goals are related to that objective, but it’s just not the case. When you select the Sales objective, you have several performance goal options which have nothing to do with fulfilling the task of sales.

“Number of Conversions” and “Value of Conversions” are the only performance goals that will help you drive more sales. The others (Landing Page Views, Link Clicks, Daily Unique Reach, and Impressions) are unlikely to lead you there.

That doesn’t mean there’s no reason to use those other performance goals. They’re simply not directly tied to Sales and shouldn’t be included within the Sales objective.

This is what creates so much confusion. Advertisers believe that there’s some sort of sales-related optimization power happening because they select the Sales objective, but that’s not necessarily the case.

If you select Impressions, your ad’s just going to get shown a bunch. That’s it. If sales happen, it’s incidental and not a focus of the delivery algorithm.

There are 21 performance goals in all and 71 different combinations of ways to get to them. That needs to be simplified.

Below is my proposal for how the new campaign objectives could be structured with the conversion locations and performance goals beneath them…

1. Awareness

This is the one objective that needs the least amount of tweaking, but it’s already the simplest.

There aren’t currently any conversion location selections. I’m sure you could technically add a layer here with conversion locations, but I don’t know that they really matter.

Proposed Performance Goals:

• Reach
• Impressions
• Ad Recall Lift
• NEW: Daily unique reach

All of these performance goals are related to Awareness in some way or another. I’m not sure why Daily Unique Reach wasn’t already an option, but I’m adding it.

Performance Goals Removed:

• ThruPlay Views (moved to Engagement)
• 2-Second Continuous Video Views (moved to Engagement)

These video view goals seem out of place for Awareness. It’s not that video videos don’t impact awareness. But, these should be part of engagement.

2. Engagement

This was already the fullest objective, prior to this process. Since I’m removing the Traffic objective (more on that later), any related performance goals were moved here.

Proposed Conversion Locations:

• Messaging apps
• On your ad
• Calls
• Website
• Facebook page
• Facebook group
• NEW: Instagram profile

It may seem like overkill, but all of these are needed for various engagement goals where the advertiser wants link clicks, landing page views, messaging conversations, video engagement, or post engagement.

The Instagram Profile conversion location was previously included under Traffic for ads driving to your Instagram profile, and that seems like a better fit here.

Conversion Locations Removed:

• App (moved to App Promotion)

There’s an objective for App Promotion which should cover any promotion of your app, as the name implies.

There are a whole lot of performance goals here, I’ll admit. But, unless you were to split off a new objective for Messaging or Calls, these all seem to make sense here.

Also keep in mind that these performance goals don’t all appear in one drop-down menu. It depends on which conversion location is selected.

Proposed Performance Goals:

• Click to Message
• Sponsored Message
• ThruPlay Views
• 2-second continuous video views
• Engagement with a post
• Event responses
• Reminders set
• Calls
• Website conversions (non-purchase and non-lead)
• Landing page views
• Link clicks
• Page likes
• NEW: Conversations
• NEW: Instagram profile visits

The Conversations performance goal is currently included within the Sales objective under the Messaging Apps conversion location. While you may want Sales from that engagement, it’s not the optimized action.

Performance Goals Removed:

• Daily unique reach (moved to Awareness)
• Impressions (moved to Awareness)
• App events (moved to App Promotion)

Daily unique reach and Impressions will appear repeatedly. I’m not sure why Meta insists on making them so readily available, regardless of objective.

3. Leads

This objective should be the most straightforward, but you’ll see that Meta currently clutters it up with completely unnecessary options.

Only keep performance goals that actually allow you to optimize for Leads.

Proposed Conversion Locations:

• Website
• Instant forms
• Messenger
• Instant forms and Messenger
• Instagram

Conversion Locations Removed:

• Calls (moved to Engagement)
• App (moved to App Promotion)

Sure, phone calls could technically be used to drive leads. But that’s incredibly difficult to measure and there’s no optimization for the lead itself from a phone call. Just use Engagement and the Call conversion location.

Once again, let’s move all app-related optimization to App Promotion.

Proposed Performance Goals:

• Website Conversions (Lead and Complete Registration only)
• Leads
• Conversion Leads

Super simple. You want leads? Set a performance goal related to leads.

There is no reason to include any of the following performance goals for the Leads objective. If you’re using any of these, do not expect to generate leads. Find a different objective.

Performance Goals Removed:

• Landing page views (moved to Engagement)
• Link clicks (moved to Engagement)
• Daily unique reach (moved to Awareness)
• Impressions (moved to Awareness)
• Calls (moved to Engagement)
• App events (moved to App Promotion)

4. App Promotion

The only conversion location for App Promotion is your app, so this is rather simple. You could technically add the Website and App conversion location here, but let’s keep that simple and leave it with the Sales objective.

Proposed Performance Goals:

• App events
• App installs
• Value of conversions
• NEW: Link clicks

I like how clean it is to keep one performance goal in a single objective, but I needed to make an exception with link clicks here because we’re talking about app promotion. You should still be able to optimize for link clicks, but that action is moved here.

Performance Goals Removed: NONE

The one potential problem will be Awareness-related performance goals to promote your app. I’m not sure how often advertisers do that now. If Meta can’t add App as a conversion location for the Awareness objective, we may need to add the awareness-related performance goals here.

5. Sales

This may be the objective that is used most often and which leads to the most misunderstandings. It’s too complicated now. Everything we do here should be related to driving sales.

Proposed Conversion Locations:

• Website
• Website and App

This got a little tricky. I want to continue to move anything app-related to App Promotion. Unfortunately, there’s a Website and App conversion location, so it needs to go somewhere. It could technically go either here or within App Promotion.

Conversion Locations Removed:

• App (moved to App Promotion)
• Messaging Apps (moved to Engagement)
• Calls (moved to Engagement)

You can generate sales with your app, too, but use App Promotion for that. Same goes for Messaging Apps and Calls, but there’s currently no way to optimize for the purchase when using those locations. If that changes, we can add them back.

Proposed Performance Goals:

• Conversions (value-based only)
• Value of conversions

It’s simple. Use the Sales objective to optimize for value-based conversion events. Otherwise, find a different objective.

That means, there’s a whole lot of stuff that will be moved out of this objective…

Performance Goals Removed:

• Landing page views (moved to Engagement)
• Link clicks (moved to Engagement)
• Daily unique reach
• Impressions (moved to Awareness)
• App events (moved to Awareness)
• Conversations (moved to Engagement)
• Calls (moved to Engagement)

REMOVED: Traffic Objective

This objective has no unique purpose. It’s primarily a way to send link clicks and landing page views to your website, app, messaging apps, and Instagram profile (as well as optimize for calls). All of this could be done within Engagement. Link clicks and landing page views are, after all, a form of basic engagement.

So, to make it official…

Proposed Conversion Locations: NONE

Conversion Locations Removed:

• Website (moved to Engagement)
• App (moved to App Promotion)
• Messaging apps (moved to Engagement)
• Instagram profile (moved to Engagement)
• Calls (moved to Engagement)

Proposed Performance Goals: NONE

Performance Goals Removed:

• Landing page views (moved to Engagement)
• Link clicks (moved to Engagement)
• Daily unique reach (moved to Awareness)
• Conversations (moved to Engagement)
• Impressions (moved to Awareness)
• Instagram profile visits (moved to Engagement)
• Calls (moved to Engagement)

Meta could make Traffic worthwhile if they ever create performance goals that are unique to website traffic — specifically quality traffic actions and behavior. Until that happens, it’s a mostly pointless objective.

Your Turn

This is my vision for what a new simplified version of the campaign objective flow could look like. It’s not perfect, and I’m sure there are holes. But anything you’d change or add?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post How Meta Could Improve Campaign Construction Flow appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

If you’re a Meta advertiser, you’ve experienced this. You face the task of running ads that will drive more purchases or sign-ups, but they are utterly failing. Your ads aren’t converting at all, or the number of conversions is startlingly low.

It’s easy to blame Meta for your bad performance, but you know that’s a bad approach. Instead, you should troubleshoot to isolate the specific factors that are leading to these bad results so that you can address them.

Stop throwing money away. Your lack of conversions is likely due to at least one of these things…

1. Pixel, API, or Event Problems

If you get this wrong, you have no chance. Events are how important conversions are defined. This makes attribution (credit given to your ad for conversions) possible. And the algorithm learns from those attributed conversions to make adjustments to delivery.

You haven’t set up the pixel or Conversions API.

If you don’t have either set up, what are we even doing? I assume you’ve got the pixel set up — that’s the bare minimum now. But, attribution is bound to be incomplete if you haven’t also set up the Conversions API — either web or CRM version.

You’ve set up events incorrectly.

It’s one thing to have the foundation (pixel and Conversions API) set up properly. That’s worthless window dressing without events.

In some cases, event setup is straightforward. In others, it can be complex. The result could be undercounting, overcounting, or events that haven’t been deduplicated.

This confuses Meta, which will impact your results.

You’re optimizing for the wrong event.

You could have everything set up properly, but the problem could be that you’re optimizing for an event that isn’t your ultimate goal.

Advertisers often do this because they are unable to exit the learning phase by optimizing for their conversion event of choice (like a purchase), so they may optimize instead for something further up the funnel that will generate more volume.

It’s not that this is necessarily something you shouldn’t try. But it’s always a gamble to optimize for an event that isn’t what you ultimately want. More often than not, this results in not getting the thing that will make the campaign successful.

2. Your Performance Goal

A surefire way to get disappointing conversion results is to set a performance goal for something other than a conversion.

The performance goal may be the most important step you take when creating a campaign. It defines what you want to accomplish. This also impacts who sees your ads. The algorithm will dynamically update delivery in an effort to get you more of that action.

If you set a performance goal for link clicks, landing page views, ThruPlay, post engagement, or some other top-of-the-funnel action, don’t be surprised if you struggle to get any conversions.

Why? Meta’s delivery algorithm doesn’t care if you get conversions in that case. The only focus is on getting you those clicks or other actions because that’s what you defined as your performance goal.

If you want conversions, set a performance goal that reflects that.

3. Your Ad Copy or Creative

You could summarize this section by simply saying that if you create a bad ad, you should not expect to get conversions. But, let’s dig a bit deeper.

Understand that people aren’t robots. You can’t just create an ad and expect people to perform the action that you want. You have a role to play.

In fact, ad copy and creative may be more important now than ever before. Since your targeting inputs mean less than they once did, much of the targeting is determined by your ad. You attract your ideal audience.

Here are some examples of how your ad can go wrong…

Your copy doesn’t inspire an action.

This is the most important quality of good copy. It needs to inspire the action that you want. A prospective customer should read your ad and know what they are supposed to do and why.

Your ad doesn’t clearly articulate the value of your product.

What makes your product special? What is the customer’s pain point that your product solves? It’s not always easy to articulate these things in an ad, but that’s your job.

Your copy is unprofessional or is filled with typos.

The audience matters, but there’s often no better way to repel potential customers than an ad that’s littered with typos and grammatical errors. You don’t need to be buttoned up and professional for all audiences, but you still need to convey a trustworthy brand message.

Your creative is fuzzy, out of focus, or poorly done.

Unprofessional execution can be found in the creative, too. You don’t need professionally staged images. Those can be ineffective, too. And while there are arguments for the effectiveness of intentionally ugly ads, the audience matters.

Your creative isn’t optimized by placement.

Your ads will be shown in many different placements with various aspect ratios and design specs. Some of it will be taken care of automatically for you. But, your creative can also be cropped in ways that impact your brand. The copy may also be limited by character counts, thereby impacting your message.

Your ad is bombarded by negative comments that you don’t address.

Do you publish ads and walk away? If you get bombarded with negative comments, you can’t just ignore them. They need to be addressed in some way, or they may be the reason why no one is converting.

4. Ineffective Offer

This is loosely connected to your copy itself, but there is a difference.

You could actually do everything right with your ad, but your offer itself isn’t desirable. Great copy can’t fix a bad offer.

Is the price too high? Is the discount a weak 10% off or free shipping? Did you fail to make your offer irresistible?

You could potentially create an ad with no copy at all. If the image features an amazing offer, it will generate conversions.

Your offer is that important. Take your goggles off. Would you act on your offer? If not, come up with something better.

5. Landing Page Issues

You’re doing everything right. You’ve set up the pixel, Conversions API, and events properly. You created an amazing ad with an inspiring call-to-action and an offer that can’t be refused. But, you still aren’t getting conversions.

It’s probably because of your landing page. And that’s part of the problem for advertisers. You are judged on the performance of your ads, but you may have no control over the landing page experience.

Consider these problems…

Loading and connection issues.

Your ad inspired a potential customer to click. They’re excited. The page loads and loads or eventually crashes. Do not overestimate the potential customer’s patience. They will move on and never come back.

Poorly designed page.

I’ve seen some amazing ads that lead to the cheapest, lowest-quality landing pages. While ugly ads might work sometimes, don’t expect that to be the case for your landing page. You will lose trust.

Confusing or broken purchase flow.

You require multiple steps to complete the purchase, and those steps are unclear. Maybe the customer is unable to easily able to update their cart or apply a promo code. If you make it too complicated, they will leave.

Branding and messaging are inconsistent with your ad.

Do not underestimate the importance of consistency. Colors, branding, and messaging should be consistent from ad to landing page. Was the product or offer that you promised in the ad found on the landing page, or does it look different?

The landing page violates rules related to post-click experiences.

Low-quality post-click experiences like pop-ups, lots of ads, and more can increase your costs, if not get your ads rejected.

If any of these are problems, consider experiences that eliminate, or at least minimize, the landing page. If you need leads, use instant forms. For sales, consider Shops.

6. Product Problems

If you can confidently check off every item we’ve listed so far, you are running out of excuses. The problem might be obvious.

If no one will buy your product, maybe it’s because no one wants to buy your product.

Or maybe the competition in this space is so great that you are unable to stand out. If someone can buy a similar product from a well-known and trusted brand, what makes your product special?

It’s possible the problems go even deeper. Your product has a bad reputation. Bad reviews. Low quality or poor customer service.

These are all issues that are difficult to overcome.

7. CPM Related Issues

When we talk about CPM (Cost Per 1,000 Impressions) related issues in this context, we’re not talking about slight increases that drive up your costs. We’re talking about CPMs that are so high that they’re virtually impossible to overcome.

There are many factors that drive a high CPM:

• Competition for the audience
• Seasonal competition (Black Friday)
• Stale ads with high frequency
• Negative feedback on your ads (hide, report)
• Limiting your audience size unnecessarily
• A difficult or controversial industry

A high CPM gives you fewer impressions for your budget, which will likely mean fewer conversions and potential delivery issues.

8. Your Budget is Too Low

It’s simple. If you can’t spend enough to generate conversions, the delivery algorithm can’t properly learn from the results that it gets. More volume helps the algorithm properly optimize and make adjustments to get you the best results possible.

If you’re generating five conversions per week because you’re spending $20 per day, the algorithm is mostly going blind. It won’t exit the learning phase, and you’ll end up in learning limited.

That doesn’t mean it’s impossible to get results in that state, but performance won’t be stable or optimal.

I realize that not everyone can simply spend more money to get more conversions. But, in some cases, this is self inflicted. You have an excuse if you can only spend $20 per day and it’s all dedicated to one ad set. You don’t have an excuse if you can spend $100 per day, but only $20 is dedicated to the ad set for conversions.

You could combine campaign and ad sets and focus your budget, but you’ve chosen not to.

Your Turn

Are there any other issues I missed?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post 8 Reasons Your Ads Aren’t Converting appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

One of the most common complaints among Meta advertisers is regarding low-quality results. They get results that appear good on the surface. Scratch a bit, and they realize that they’re getting very little for their money.

This is most often found with leads or top-of-the-funnel actions (link clicks, landing page views, post engagement, or ThruPlay). You realize you’re getting empty actions and feel like you’ve been robbed.

Once you understand how everything works, it makes sense why this happens. You’ll see the weaknesses and the specific steps you’ll need to take to make high-quality results more likely.

In this post, I’m going to focus on six of the steps that you can take to control the quality of advertising results.

1. Performance Goal

If I could make this step 1 through 6, I would. It’s simply that important. It explains why this problem happens and how it helps you fix it.

The performance goal is what defines success. It is, quite literally, your goal for measuring performance of your ads.

Example: If your performance goal is “Maximize Link Clicks,” the entire focus for optimization of ad delivery will be on getting you the most link clicks within your budget. There is zero concern for what people do after clicking. Meta isn’t trying to get you “quality” link clicks. The assumption is that you simply want link clicks.

Let’s provide a few examples of how using performance goals can improve result quality, based on what you’re trying to accomplish…

Purchases

Even when optimizing for conversions where the conversion event is a purchase, you can run into this problem. It’s not so much that you’re getting “low quality” results, but they may be low value. Why? The algorithm is literally focused on maximizing your number of purchases.

But you can impact that by changing your performance goal to maximize value instead. The focus then will be on higher value purchases. That may result in fewer conversions, but will likely lead to more revenue.

Leads

Possibly the most common quality results problem of all is related to leads. We’ll address it multiple times in this post. But there are a couple of things you can try from a performance goal perspective.

The problem happens because your performance goal is “Leads.” But that’s not really your goal. Your goal is to increase the number of people who are likely to buy from you. Meta doesn’t know that.

Unless, of course, you optimize for Conversion Leads when using instant forms.

The conversion lead setup process is a long, and potentially frustrating, one. But it can be worth it. It allows you to define your funnel for Meta so that your leads can be followed from registration to an end goal. The algorithm’s focus will be on the eventual purchase, not the initial lead.

If you run ads for website leads, there are things you can try, too. You could optimize for an action that happens after the lead submission. That could be as simple as setting the conversion event as something related to an action that can be taken on the confirmation page (watch a video, click a button, etc.).

I recorded a video once about a creative way to improve the quality of webinar signups. The main thing is to be flexible and strategic.

Traffic

This is the worst one of all. If your performance goal is to maximize link clicks or landing page views, prepare to be disappointed. Unless you significantly restrict your audience, you’re likely to get incredibly low-quality results. Just empty clicks.

But that’s partly your fault. As far as Meta knows, you want landing page views. The algorithm delivered landing page views. The fact that you actually wanted or expected these people to do something else after landing on your website is something that you need to clarify.

It could mean optimizing for a standard event of some kind instead of link clicks or landing page views. Something else I’ve done is optimize for custom events I’ve created that are designed to define quality traffic behavior.

It would be helpful if Meta offered an easier way to optimize delivery for quality traffic and other top-of-the-funnel actions. Absent of that, custom events are your best alternative.

2. Lead Forms

My suggestions related to adjusting the performance goal to improve lead quality may not be reasonable if you’re budget conscious. The reason is that optimizing for conversion leads or some other event that happens after the initial submission will significantly impact volume. And when that happens, a higher budget is a necessity.

If you’re hoping to improve lead quality while continuing to optimize for a basic lead, not all hope is lost. There are several other steps that you can take.

Ask More Questions

This is Lead Generation 101. If you want more leads, ask fewer questions. If you want better (but fewer) leads, ask more questions. By making the form completion more difficult, it will kick out those who weren’t that interested after all. People often become wary about providing too much information. Those who actually complete a form that asks more questions are likely to be better leads.

Ask Custom Questions

Along similar lines as asking more questions, but you could technically ask questions that are all pre-filled using instant forms. Whether you use instant forms or a form on a website, consider asking a question that requires more thought to answer.

This could be sentence or paragraph answers that provide examples or detailed explanations. Those who aren’t that interested won’t bother.

Lead Filtering

This may be the best solution of all. Lead filtering will only allow people to complete your instant form if they answer your questions the way you want them answered.

Once again, it’s all about defining for the algorithm what you want. If only qualified leads are able to complete the form, Meta learns from those completions. This can help optimize to reach more people who are likely to complete it, too.

Avoid “More Volume” Form Type

If you use instant forms, the default form type is “More Volume.” It’s the simplest to complete.

“Higher Intent” takes you through multiple steps, including a confirmation. It may not make a huge difference, but it can help improve quality.

Try Rich Content

Another form type. Rich Content (previously called “Custom”) allows you to create an instant form with up to four sections. The additional information and steps can help improve the quality of your leads.

3. Copy and Creative

This can easily be missed. I’m not the first one to say it, but copy and creative does much of your targeting now — especially in this new world of audience expansion and broad targeting.

If your ideal customer is a specific type of person, craft your copy and creative to speak directly to that person. Appeal to their needs, desires, and pain points.

Craft generic copy and creative that appeals to everyone and expect to attract generic people.

4. Improve Your Offer

This relates to a situation where you offer something of value in exchange for contact information. It can have a huge impact on lead quality.

Make sure that your offer attracts your ideal lead. If you try to build leads by having an iPad giveaway sweepstakes, don’t be surprised when none of your leads buy from you — unless you sell iPads and related devices.

If you are collecting contact information in exchange for something of value, make sure that the something of value is especially desirable to your ideal lead. In fact, make it boring to anyone else.

5. Audience Inputs

I’m placing this way down the list because it’s less important than ever before. But that doesn’t mean that it can’t have an impact.

Sure, if you use Advantage+ Audience, your audience suggestions will likely have very little impact on the quality of your leads. The same can be said if you use original audiences and those inputs are expanded to reach a broader audience.

But, audience expansion can absolutely lead to low-quality results — especially if the result you want isn’t a purchase. When that’s the case, restricting your audience is one of your options.

Of course, your ability to restrict the audience will depend upon the performance goal. Otherwise, take an old school approach by using custom audiences.

Keep in mind that this approach does not scale well, but if your goal is to attract a high quality audience without breaking the bank, this is the way.

6. Manual Placements (Sometimes)

One of the biggest traps for low-quality results is related to weaknesses in placements. It’s actually one of the primary reasons you’ll get misleading results when optimizing for link clicks and landing page views.

Audience Network is notorious for attracting accidental clicks, bots, and click fraud (before it’s detected). If you optimize for link clicks or landing page views, the algorithm will go straight to this placement to get those clicks because the assumption is that’s what you want. You’ll get lots of them, and they’ll be cheap.

You’ll run into something similar if you optimize for ThruPlay. Meta will spend most of your budget in the Audience Network Rewarded Video placement, and you’ll get results that seem too good to be true.

They seem too good to be true because they are. These people are incentivized to watch your video to get something of value in exchange. Apps monetize themselves with this placement. So, game players may be asked to watch a video to get access to virtual currency. You’ll find these people never do anything beyond watching your video.

The reaction may be to simply remove Audience Network in all cases. But that’s not necessarily the solution either. The reason you should remove it is directly related to your performance goal and whether there are weaknesses in that placement that would be exploited to get that result.

Otherwise, you should generally use Advantage+ Placements when optimizing for any type of conversion. Remove a placement that you know is the direct source of low-quality results.

Of course, that’s not a great solution either because there’s typically a bigger issue at play. Removing these placements may help, but it won’t eliminate it entirely.

You could use News Feed only. If your performance goal is link clicks or landing page views, you’re still going to get cheap, low-quality traffic. It just won’t be as terrible as if you kept Audience Network.

You Have Control

Ultimately, it’s easy to blame Meta for getting you low-quality results. But it’s much less likely to happen if you take the proper steps to prevent it.

Set the performance goal that actually defines what you want — don’t assume that one action will naturally lead to another. Create ads and offers that attract your target customer.

After that, simply know how ad distribution works, it’s strengths and weaknesses. You’ll be better equipped to avoid, detect, and fix problems related to low-quality results.

Your Turn

What steps do you take to improve the quality of your results?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post 6 Ways to Fix Low-Quality Advertising Results 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.