Meta

Frequency controls added to Awareness campaigns on Meta

Meta has introduced an update that provides marketers with a new way to manage frequency when running brand awareness campaigns.

When using the Awareness objective with a performance goal of ‘Reach’ or ‘ThruPlay’, you may see a new section for Frequency Controls. There will be an option here for Target Frequency.

Here’s what Meta says when clicking on it…

“Target frequency helps you set how often people see your ads each week and can help you reach your intended audience at the frequency you’ve set. Target frequency is only available for campaigns that are 7 days or longer, using lifetime budget and without a bid control.”

The ‘Reach and Frequency’ or ‘Reservation’ buying types have been here for more than a year, but it’s now available on Awareness campaigns when using the ‘Auction’ buying type.

Before this update, there was only the option for a Frequency Cap–which has been available since 2016–and was used to set a maximum number of times you want to reach people. It will still be available in the Awareness campaign.

Target Frequency–the new update–allows you to set an average number of times you will reach people, meaning you can still go over that number for some users.

Restrictions to keep in mind when using Target Frequency:

• You must use lifetime budgets
• Only applicable for campaigns that are 7 days or longer
• Bid controls cannot be used

If you still can’t see this update, it will be rolling out to you soon.

Meta to offer ‘less personalised’ ads option for free in the EU

Meta has announced that it is making changes to its ad-free platform options in the EU due to further demand from regulators that their current offering doesn’t go far enough to comply with GDPR and the DMA. 

Meta announced their ad-free subscription offerings last year in order to combat the complaints, however, they have this week announced that they will be halving the cost of this subscription upon request.

Perhaps the biggest update for advertisers within the EU is the new introduction of a ‘less personalised’ options for users. Over the coming weeks, EU Meta users will be asked whether they would like to opt out of their current personalised ad experience and move to a ‘less personalised’ option that uses less personal data. 

Meta is still emphasising that they will be promoting the personalised option heavily, as ad revenue is the backbone of their business and without functioning ad targeting this all goes out the window.

We are yet to see how many users adopt this new feature, however, it’ll be interesting to see if we see increased costs and lower engagement as advertisers, with ads potentially now reaching people who are not in the target market. 

Advertisers – let’s wait and see!

Meta Ads new feature: Flexible Media

Meta is rolling out a new feature called Flexible Media, and it’s not to be confused with Flexible ads.

When uploading an asset at the ad level in a manual Sales campaign (specifically, a single image or video), you may see a discreet button in the ‘Ad creative’ section. Be warned–it will automatically apply this unless you toggle it off!

It reads…

Here’s how it works in simple terms: Meta takes your existing creative in each placement and depending on where it thinks it will perform best, will automatically decide when to share across other placements.

But in our experience so far, it honestly looks bad, putting story-sized placements in the Instagram feed placement and cutting off text. Not good!

This update is different from Flexible ads, where marketers can upload up to 10 images for an ad, giving Meta permission to choose which image to use based on the user. Flexible Media on the other hand distributes the asset across various ad placements. 

Meta is now including the ‘1-day engaged view’ as default

Meta has introduced a new default attribution setting for conversion campaigns, ‘1-day engaged-view’. Meta’s standard attribution setting is 7-day click, 1-day view. But it may now apply 7-day click, 1-day engaged view (new), 1-day view. 

The engaged-view attribution is designed to improve campaign performance by focusing on users who are likely to convert after engaging with your video for at least 10 seconds or higher (or 97% of the ad if it’s shorter). 

It’s important to be aware that it may influence ad delivery and the conversion results of your campaigns as your ads will be focused on reaching more people who engage with videos than necessarily convert.

If you don’t want to include this new setting, make sure you double-check the attribution settings before launching your meta campaigns. You can find this at the ad set level in the ‘conversions’ section.

Meta Launches Opportunity Scores

Meta has launched a new feature within Ads Manager that shows just how closely you’re working with the platform to keep campaigns, ad sets and ads optimised. 

Meta often makes recommendations in ads manager from budget suggestions to pushing advantage+ and Opportunity Score measures the extent of which an advertiser is applying these recommendations. Ranging from 0 to 100, a higher score is achieved when the advertiser is closest aligning with these suggested best practices. 

Is this another platform gimmick or is it a game-changer for those running ads?

Meta: changes to special ad categories

A change is coming to special ad categories on Meta. According to Meta, in Autumn 2024, a new special ad category “Financial products and services” will be introduced, replacing the previous credit ads category.

Advertising promoting financial products and services will be able to select this option during campaign creation like other special ad categories. When selecting this, they will have access to a limited set of audience selection tools and will not be able to refine by age or gender. Lookalike audiences will not be permitted and many detailed targeting options will be unavailable.

Examples of financial products and services ads included in this category are:

• Insurance
• Bank accounts
• Investment services
• Payment services

Meta tests option to turn off comments on ads

Meta has announced they’re testing the option to turn off comments on their ads. This new filter will give marketers more control over ads, as they will be able to turn off comments on all Facebook and Instagram feed ads via the ad set.

With the option to set comments as Public or No one, this provides marketers with more control over their advertising efforts. If a brand uses particularly sensitive content or is experiencing a high amount of spam via their comments, it’s good that Meta is introducing an optional feature.

However, there may be some downsides to it. With users more interested in authentic content than ever, advertisers opting to turn off their comments may cause more harm than good. While some industries may celebrate this new feature, consumers may be a tad cautious of brands who choose to turn off their comments. Both negative and positive comments can be very useful to brands. Negative comments highlight areas for improvement and positive comments are fantastic social proof. 

New platform announcements following Meta Connect 2024 conference

At Meta’s annual conference, they announced lots of new features, mainly surrounding AI.

A lot was announced including new hardware: Meta Quest 3S and Ray-Ban Meta glasses, as well as updates to Metaverse avatars. However, the primary focus was on AI developments and how Meta plans to integrate them.

Here’s a breakdown of some key AI features announced at Meta Connect 2024:

• Meta is testing an AI translation tool to break down language barriers by dubbing and lip-syncing Reels’ audio into other languages. It will mimic the speaker’s voice in another language, syncing their lips to match.
• Meta plans to expand its chatbot feature across Messenger, WhatsApp, Instagram, and Facebook. You can speak to Meta and it will reply; even featuring recognisable celebrity voices like John Cena and Judi Dench.
• Meta is expanding AI solutions to help businesses improve customer service and commerce. These business AIs can answer questions, discuss products, and even finalise purchases – attempting to offer seamless customer engagement.

Cross-posting is now available across Meta platforms to Threads

In August 2023, Meta announced users will be able to cross-post across both Instagram and Facebook to Threads – the option to do this can be found within your Facebook and IG composer settings. This change aims to help creators amplify updates across all three apps at once.

Meta had been testing this feature over the past few months but now it’s available for all users when turned on in settings. A few things to keep in mind, though:

• Reels cannot be cross-posted.
• Facebook videos can’t be cross-posted – only text and link posts.
• When crossposting from Instagram, the caption becomes text for the Threads post and hashtags are converted into plain text.

The upsides to this update:

• Saves time.
• Followers across multiple platforms will see your latest updates.

The downsides of this update:

• User behaviour is different across platforms, so certain posts may not be ideal for every app. This is why marketers should create unique posts for each channel that align with their brand personality.

Meta introduces new promo code update for Lead Forms

Meta has introduced a new option for lead generation forms that allows advertisers to include Promo Codes as an additional action. These reward or help people after they complete your lead form and is a great opportunity to nurture that lead further.

Previously, the only options for this feature were:

• Go to website
• View file
• Call business

This new option rewards people with a promo code that they can redeem on your website. It’s a really interesting new feature that can turn your leads into conversions, giving them that extra push.

Here’s how to set this option up:

1. Provide the URL link where the offer can be redeemed
2. Add the promo code e.g. ‘DISCOUNT50’
3. You can even edit the call to action to say what you’d like it to e.g. ‘get our discount now’

Once the lead form has been completed by the user, they will see a CTA button prompting them to copy the code and paste it online at checkout. They can easily click a button on the ad to drive them to your website for a seamless conversion journey.

Meta introduces some big campaign optimization updates

Meta announced they were introducing some new features on the platform to help improve advertiser performance and make sure users are increasing the value of every conversion.

These updates are part of Meta’s efforts to improve AI-enabled automation solutions, allowing any business to grow while ensuring every business’ objectives can be customised to achieve success.

To start, Meta will be rolling out a few initial ways for businesses to customise their campaigns by outlining what they value in their advertising efforts.

Defining the conversions businesses value most

Meta will launch a new feature called Conversion Value Rules which will help advertisers express which audiences or conversions they value.

This is what Meta has said on this…

“An advertiser may determine that certain customer segments have 30% higher lifetime value and are willing to pay more to reach these customers. Previously, they would have to segment these customers into a separate campaign, but with this new feature, they can define a higher bid for just these customers without having to create a separate campaign, enabling greater automation and performance.”

Supporting new attribution models

Secondly, Meta plans to introduce an opt-in attribution setting that reports and optimised for incremental conversions. To put it plainly, incremental conversions are ones that Meta does not believe the user would have made without seeing your ad – the purchase would not have been made if they didn’t see your ad.

This new setting is designed to shift ad delivery to focus on driving more incremental conversions, and when Meta tested earlier this year they said advertisers saw an average improvement of more than 20% in incremental conversions.

More powerful analytics integrations

If you know anything about Embryo, you’ll know we’re huge fans of the Messy Middle – the idea that the customer journey to purchase is anything but linear, it’s a lot messier! Meta has acknowledged this in their latest update, saying that it’s common for users to click or interact with several ads from a business across a variety of platforms and publishers before they’ve even considered adding to basket.

It’s common for most businesses to use external analytics tools to evaluate cross-publisher performance. But Meta wants to help advertisers understand what is working and where they see the most value in their advertising efforts. 

Meta will be introducing the ability for advertisers to connect their analytics tools directly to their ad system through a simple API setup. They will start with Google Analytics and Northbeam, but there are plans to expand this to Triple Whale and Adobe soon too.

By sharing analytics tools and incorporating an integrated approach to campaign information, Meta hopes to give advertisers a better understanding of what conversions an advertiser may value across their marketing mix. And over time, Meta’s AI models will be able to use this data to help fine-tune campaign optimisation.

Meta introduces AI chatbots

Meta has introduced 3 updates to chatbots/messaging tools:

1. Meta has introduced chatbots on Messenger that can chat with customers and provide support. It is built with a large language model (LLama 3). The change aims to save businesses money on service costs.

Meta says ‘We’re training AI on the most popular questions businesses receive on Messenger, built with Meta Llama 3, to understand and respond to customer messages about products in engaging and natural ways.’

A case study on the business ‘White Coat Manila’ showed this feature saved at least 20% of customer support costs.

Customers will still have the option to speak to a human and businesses can manually enter the conversation at any time.

2. Paid marketing messages are now on Messenger as well as WhatsApp for select advertisers. Advertisers with access to the feature can send paid marketing messages to opted-in customers.

3. Introduction of Threads API. According to Meta the supported features include:

• The ability to authenticate, publish posts, and fetch their own content via the API.
• Management capabilities so businesses and creators can retrieve and engage with replies to their posts, set reply controls and hide or unhide specific replies.
• Media and account-level insights, such as the number of views, likes and replies

Meta says their continuous investments and updates to AI features have helped increase average ROAS for advertisers by 12% since 2022.

Meta introduces ads for Instagram broadcast channels

Meta has introduced a new update that allows users to run ads to grow their Instagram Broadcast Channels.

If you’re unsure what Broadcast Channels are, they were released in September 2023 and are a way for creators and brands to share messages like announcements, content and any other information with others on Instagram. These channels are found in the direct messages tab on Instagram and are available to anyone. As Instagram put it…

“Anyone that joins your channel will be able to react and reply to messages you send or vote in polls you create in the channel, but they will not be able to send messages. Since your broadcast channels are public, they are discoverable by anyone on Instagram.”

To invite members to your broadcast channel, it’s simple. When you send the first message all of your followers will receive a notification inviting them to the channel. The other ways to invite people include:

• Sharing an invite link to your channel
• Adding the channel to your stories
• Sharing a message from the channel to a story
• Sharing a QR code for the channel

With that in mind, Meta recently launched an update that allows users to run ads to grow their Broadcast Channels. This option will allow marketers to increase awareness and membership while adding to their community.

Here’s how to set up an ad for Instagram Broadcast Channels:

1. Create an ‘Engagement’ objective campaign. Ensure your Instagram account is linked to Meta; you should see a message that reads, ‘Invite people to your Broadcast Channel’.
2. At the ad set level select ‘Broadcast Channel’ as the conversion location. Please note that any ads created in this ad set will invite users to join your channel.
3. At the ad level, select your Broadcast Channel as the ad’s destination.
4. Optimise the ad, as usual, filling out primary text and headlines, etc.

Meta introduces new creative enhancements

It’s no shock to see that Meta is adding even more creative enhancements to its Advantage+ creative section. When using this feature, Meta automatically optimises your images and videos to versions that it believes your audience is more likely to interact with. Depending on the format or placements of your ad, different enhancements may be available.

Advantage+ creative is a feature Meta wants users to utilise, and more often than not rewards you for trying things out–even if some of the options (looking at you “Music”) are a bit hit-and-miss.

Meta’s latest addition to creative enhancements is “Adjust text length”. The description of this is as follows…

“We will only show the first line of your primary text when it might improve performance.”

To make an impression on social media, marketers only have seconds, which is why the first line of copy is always the most important. This feature could be useful in improving the overall performance of certain ads. Our tip? Be sure to provide enough information and context in the first line of your primary text when this feature is enabled to make the most of it.

Meta: Dynamic ads are being replaced with Flexible ads

Dynamic Creative is no longer available and has been replaced by the ‘Flexible’ ad format.

Firstly, what did this feature entail? Dynamic Creative allowed you to submit multiple images or videos, primary text, headlines, descriptions, and call-to-action buttons for a single ad. Meta then had the power to mix and match these elements to generate better results.

Now Meta has announced they’re scrapping Dynamic Creative after 7 years and replacing the format with Flexible ads. When using the Flexible ad format, Meta will choose your ad format, based on where it appears and who sees it, to allow for improved performance.

This format was implemented as a creative option at the ad level in November last year. When this was introduced there was a “See What’s New” alert that read…

“Optimize your ad whenever it’s delivered with flexible formats. Use flexible formats to reduce creative fatigue and show your ad in the specific format we predict will perform best for each person.”

Similarly to Dynamic Creative, you can provide the following creative elements when using this format:

• Up to 10 images and/or videos
• Up to 5 variations of ‘Primary text’
• Up to 5 variations of ‘Headlines’
• Up to 5 variations of ‘Descriptions’

When this update was released last year, a lot of marketers wondered why was this necessary as it was pretty similar to Dynamic Creative. Now it looks like Meta was planning to phase Dynamic Creative out and replace it with the new Flexible format. As they could never be used together anyway, this update is one that we saw coming.

Presently, wherever you are using Dynamic Creative, Meta will enable this new feature so you won’t need to make any huge adjustments and your ad performance won’t be massively affected.

Meta: schedule individual ads with a manual sales campaign

A big update for Meta: marketers can now schedule individual ads!

Before this update, ads could only be scheduled at the ad set level on manual sales campaigns, which proved quite annoying if you wanted an ad to appear during certain times or days without creating one manually.

This quality-of-life update can be helpful for those who have a time-sensitive offer or promotion but don’t fancy creating a whole new ad set. It sounds perfect for those who have seasonal-specific discounts that happen over certain days as the individual ad can be scheduled for its original price to be replaced by the discount once the promotion begins. The specific ad can be set live to reflect the sale when it goes live and can be scheduled to end when the promotion is over.

This feature had previously been available for Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns, but it’s being made available for manual sales campaigns, meaning more control over targeting.

Here’s how to schedule an individual ad at the ad level:

1. Create a manual sales campaign and choose ‘Website’ as the conversion location.
2. At the ad level, you may see a “Show More Options” under Multi-Advertiser Ads. If you don’t, the update hasn’t been rolled out to you yet. If you do, click it.
3. This will reveal a scheduling option and will give you the option to set a specific start and end date for the ad.

Meta: new tab suggestions for detailed targeting

Meta has introduced an update to its targeting options, allowing users to see and add detailed targeting suggestions based on “Relevance” or “Size”.

When you click on the suggestions button under detailed targeting two tabs now appear with recommendations based on the relevance of the size of different audiences. It’s currently available for both ‘original audience’ settings and ‘Advantage+ audience’ inputs.

Here’s an overview of what each tab suggests:

• Relevance: Suggestions relevant to the targeting options already selected. This is better for targeting niche audiences and getting inspiration for potential audiences.
• Size: Suggestions based on the audience size. Choosing audiences in this tab would be useful for broader campaigns.

Before this update, if you wanted to check for relevance or audience sizes it was a manual process. Now, this update makes life easier to see what Meta suggests and develop a more informed strategy.

Meta introduces site links in Facebook ads

Meta recently rolled out site links for Facebook ads which enables advertisers to display additional business and product information on their ads. The premise is fairly similar to Google ads with the addition of multiple landing pages featured.

Site links appear below the main asset whether that is an image or video. When users click the site link, they will be redirected to the appropriate landing page.

How to implement site links in your Facebook ads

• Go to Ads Manager.
• Click +Create.
• Choose your objective:
  • You can use either Traffic, Engagement, Leads, or Sales.
  • Site links aren’t supported on the app promotion objective.
• (If you have selected the sales objective:)
  • Toggle off use a catalogue at the campaign level. This won’t be necessary on other campaigns.
• Fill out campaign details:
  • At the campaign level, fill out the campaign details sections as needed.
  • Click next.
• Set the conversion location:
  • Select Website as your conversion location.
• Ad set level:
  • Fill in the sections on the ad set level e.g. budget, audience controls, and placements sections.
• Ad level:
  • After adding your creative, open the Advantage+ creative enhancements section where there will be an option to add site links card. Make sure you turn this feature on.
  • You can also preview how your ad will look here if any changes are required.
• Add ad sources:
  • Enter a website URL in the ad sources section. Meta will automatically add site links to your ad.

Please note that Meta will try to find useful site links automatically, but if it can’t, you can add them manually. Keep in mind that you will need to add at least 3 site links to display them on your ad.

Meta Introduces New Opportunity Score in Ads Manager

Meta has introduced a new Opportunity Score in Ads Manager. But what exactly does that mean?

In Meta’s own words: “In the Account Overview tab in Meta Ads Manager, you may see a campaign strength score between 0 and 100% that relates to the potential performance of your campaign. The higher the number, the more you are following best practices.”

This update reflects the effectiveness of all active ads within an ad account, rather than focusing on individual campaigns, ad sets, or ads. This score is based entirely on how many delivery recommendations you utilise. While it doesn’t directly impact your ad performance, a high score hints at strategies that could boost your results, and Meta is encouraging users to ensure their opportunity score is as high as possible.

How are campaign strength scores calculated?

• The campaign strength score is calculated from a blend of factors, including your campaign and ad settings, current campaign performance, and an assessment of performance potential for each recommendation that is aligned with your campaign.

Most of the time, when Meta encourages you to do something, whether it be Advantage+ related or Opportunity Scores, we recommend testing it. Usually, you’ll see a slight boost in results as a reward, and it could be a good roadmap for improvement, showing you where to focus your efforts.

Meta: Existing Customer Budget Cap No Longer Available

Meta is removing the option to set an existing customer budget cap in Advantage+ Shopping campaigns. Not only that, they are updating how advertisers control audience-related budgets by encouraging us to use two ad sets to achieve the same goal, which is also something new.

The existing customer budget cap feature allowed advertisers to set a maximum budget percentage to spend on existing customers. Now Meta is removing the option for setting a budget cap percentage, and instead, is encouraging us to control audience-related budgets by using different ad sets which hasn’t been possible before.

Here are a few options available for us to still allocate the budget effectively…

Option 1: Create a new campaign that doesn’t spend the budget on current customers.

In the Audience controls at the Ad Set level, choose More, then Exclude these custom audiences to remove existing customers.

Option 2: Create a new campaign that splits the budget between new and existing customers.

Make two ad sets in the campaign to set a limit for spending on existing customers.

Option 3: Using Custom audiences effectively.

Utilise Custom audiences to target individuals you recognise as your current customers. Use the same creative in both ad sets and duplicate them. In the second ad set, navigate to Audience controls, then choose More. Exclude these custom audiences to remove individuals you classify as existing customers from your targeting.