Meta

Incremental attribution is being rolled out on Meta

Meta has begun rolling out a new way to measure and optimise ads. This update isn’t based on how many conversions happen, but how many happened because of your ad. Traditionally, Meta shows how many people clicked on or viewed your ad and then converted. But those people may have converted anyway–even without seeing your ad.

Incremental attribution is a new update that aims to filter out the conversions that would have converted anyway using a ‘sophisticated model’. Instead, it aims to focus on pinpointing the conversions that happened specifically because of your ad. If the ad caused someone to convert, then that’s incremental conversion.

This could be a fantastic tool for marketers in understanding exactly where their conversions are coming from. If you’re paying for conversions that would have happened no matter what, then it’s wasted ad spend and could help improve your overall strategy.

However, testing this new option is something to consider before jumping straight in. Here’s what Digital Marketing Expert, Bram Van der Hallen has said about testing:

“However, I think you should consider testing this new option versus optimizing for volume, where your focus is on generating as many attributed conversions as possible. If it really generates incremental conversions, it can steer growth.”

Here’s how to check if you have access to the new update:

• Set up a new Sales campaign.
• At the ad set level, find your conversion event.
• Click “Show more options” below it.
• Look for a setting called Incremental Attribution.

Meta is testing a new landing page feature

Meta has introduced a new landing page feature on select accounts, which uses AI image recognition to decide which landing page is most appropriate for your ad and is likely to improve performance.

The new feature is called ‘Optimise website destination’ and will pick the most relevant page on your website to direct users to by using its image recognition capabilities to look at products in your catalogue.

This has the potential to make ads more personalised and effective. The only catch is- you can’t opt out. The feature is automatically applied in Sales campaigns optimising for ‘purchases’. This means that whilst you might see an uplift in sales as a result of relevant landing pages, you also lose control over which ones you direct users to, which isn’t ideal if you want to tailor your strategy to push certain products.

This new feature is still in the testing phase so it may not be rolled out to all Meta accounts, but it’s definitely one to keep an eye on.

For more Meta updates, you can visit Bram Van der Hallen’s LinkedIn page.

Meta adds conditional formatting to Ads Manager

Meta has introduced a new feature allowing you to include conditional formatting in Ads Manager itself, rather than just in the ‘Ads Reporting Tool’.

Marketers can build custom reports by clicking the arrow next to the column name and selecting ‘conditional formatting’. You’ll then need to add a new rule, and you can select from the following options:

• IF: ‘cost per result’, Purchase ROAS’, CPM, CTR and CPC.
• For event: you have the option to select ‘all events’ or choose an individual event.
• Is: ‘greater than’, ‘greater than or equal to’, ‘in range’, ‘less than’, ‘less than or equal to’ and ‘not in range’.
• Colour: Assign your rule a colour to make results more visible and easier to analyse. You can pick between multiple colour options, including red, yellow, green and blue.

The new feature will allow you to identify your best and worst performing ads in a quicker and easier way- which is a big win for marketers. Anything that makes results more detailed and easier to analyse is welcome news and will allow marketers to make data-backed decisions.

If you’d like to read more about this update, as well as other Meta updates, you can head to Bram Van der Hallen’s LinkedIn page.

Meta will add UTM parameters automatically with new update

Meta has added a new update that will automatically add UTM parameters to ads if you forget to add them in manually.

This is good news for marketers, as it means even if you forget to add your UTMs to your ad build, you’ll still be able to track performance and attribute results back to your ads.

If you forget to add UTMs, Meta will now add the following to the end of your URLs:

– utm_source (values can be fb, ig, msg, an)
– utm_medium=paid
– utm_campaign (value will be the ID of your campaign)
– utm_content (value will be the ID of your ad)
– utm_term (value will be the ID of your ad set)
– utm_id

This will help with analysing and reporting results and will ensure you always have accurate tracking set up in your ads.

As with all Meta automatic and AI features, we recommend checking your ads and ensuring all details are correct or manually inputting your own UTM parameters.

If you’d like to read more about this update or any other recent Meta updates, you can visit Bram Van der Hallen’s LinkedIn page.

Meta updates campaign charts to include budget forecasts

Meta has added a new feature that will help marketers plan and forecast their budgets.

When it’s available on your account, you will see a blue graph icon next to your campaign budget. When you click on this icon, it will take you to a ‘budget forecast’ card.

Similarly to Google’s forecast, Meta’s new budget forecast card will show you estimated daily results when your budget is updated, and will also recommend a daily budget for your campaign. The budget forecast card also details estimated cost per result, and estimated percentage increase/decrease in results, depending on different budget levels.

This new feature may be able to give indicative results, but as with any Meta AI feature, it’s important to take it with a pinch of salt and apply context and strategy to any campaigns you’re working on.

If you’d like to read more about this update, and other important Meta updates, you can visit Bram Van der Hallen’s LinkedIn page.

Meta adds new features for Lead Generation Instant Forms

Meta has recently added some new features to Lead Generation Instant Forms.

The first new feature is potentially problematic for advertisers, as it allows Meta to adjust or remove elements of the form based on what users are most likely to respond to. This means if a question on your form is essential to your business or to qualify your lead, you’ll need to pay extra attention to make sure this new feature is switched off. You can select ‘optimized’, which will allow Meta to tailor the form in each ad with the goal of maximising performance, or ‘manual’, which allows you to select the elements of the form you want Meta to be able to tailor.

The second new feature is better news for advertisers, as it could potentially increase the quality of leads. If you select ‘higher intent’ as the form type, there’s an option to require phone number verification with a one-time passcode when users are filling out the form. This could, however, add an extra step to the user journey and may decrease form completions.

The third update allows you to accept multiple answers to one question on a form. This could allow advertisers to gain more detailed answers and therefore more detailed insight into their customer base. This information can then be used to create strategies moving forward, including who to target and what messaging to focus on.

Lastly, Meta now allows you to get leads directly into your email inbox. When creating a leads campaign, you can select the option ’email’ for lead delivery on your Instant Forms. You will then receive an email if you have new leads. You’re also able to select the frequency of these emails.

To read more about these updates, you can visit Bram Van der Hallen’s LinkedIn page.

We spoke to Romy Ledder, Founder of Narwhal Communications, about this update:

Expert opinion

Romy Ledder, Founder of Narwhal Communications

"Meta’s latest Lead Gen updates offer a mix of opportunities and challenges for advertisers. While automated form optimisation could boost performance, it also risks removing key qualifying questions. Keeping control over your form settings is crucial. On the upside, features like phone number verification and multiple-answer fields can enhance lead quality and audience insights, making it easier to refine targeting and messaging. But advertisers should carefully test these features to ensure they improve lead quality without negatively impacting conversion rates with the added steps needed."

WhatsApp adds music for status updates

Housed under the Meta group of platforms, WhatsApp has remained one of the main online messaging platforms as opposed to becoming a more social media content led platform.

Alongside using the platform for messaging friends, family or businesses, WhatsApp also allows users to add a personal status for their contacts to see, whether this be an availability status like online or busy, or simply a personal message.

Now however, the platform is adding a new feature to statuses with the addition of music sharing. Users will now see a music note icon at the top of their screen when creating a status which when tapped, unlocks a library of songs from Meta’s audio suite to pick from.

This additional feature mirrors the same ability on Instagram and Facebook stories, where a user can clip up to 60 seconds of a song on their story post.

Is this another way of Meta engaging their users, or is it simply a feature that will go unused?

Meta introduces reviews in Facebook ads

Meta is in the process of launching a new feature that incorporates Facebook reviews and ratings in ads. When users interact with an ad and complete a purchase, Meta may prompt them to rate and review the purchase experience. Meta collects these reviews at the Facebook page level and showcases them in future ads, ultimately building brand loyalty and trust.

By default, businesses that meet Meta’s rating and review requirements will have them displayed in their ads. It’s good to note that if your business has not yet received any ratings or reviews, the feature may not be available to you.

Advertisers will have the option to disable this feature if they wish via Meta Business Suite. To do so, follow these steps:

• Visit Meta Business Suite.
• Click on All tools from the left-hand menu.
• Under Manage, select Ratings and reviews.
• Find the toggle option labelled “Show ratings above 4 stars on my ads.“
• Turn off the toggle to disable ratings from appearing in your ads.

Additionally, if you’d like to manage your reviews, either replying to customer reviews, editing your responses or reporting any that go against your Community Standards, follow these steps in Meta Business Suite:

Viewing & responding to reviews:

• Navigate to Meta Business Suite > All Tools > Ratings and Reviews.
• Click Respond under the Actions column, write a reply, and submit it for review.

Editing or deleting responses:

• Click View Response and choose Edit or Delete.

Reporting inappropriate reviews:

• Click Report, select a reason, and submit for Meta’s review.
• While under review, the status changes to “Pending.” If the review violates policies, it will be removed.

Businesses can now add ‘Branding’ to Meta ads

Meta’s new update allows advertisers to add branding at the ad level. This feature lets users upload their logo, fonts, and colours for headlines, captions and overlays to use in ads.

This update is yet another sign of Meta’s push for AI-generated imagery on the platform. Over the past several months, Meta has been rolling out various generative AI tools, including background generation, image expansion, and text variation. Meta has insisted that these generative AI features can save users five or more hours each week, as well as resources while promoting productivity. They also believe that generative AI alleviates creative fatigue by allowing users to introduce new ad creative more swiftly.

With this shift to include branding, Meta is clearly urging advertisers to rely on AI-generated content to match a brand’s identity. As this update is opt-in by default, it indicates that Meta is still gently easing advertisers to the concept of AI-driven assets. Previously, AI-generated content was more difficult to govern; this new update gives advertisers more control over AI visuals and helps streamline brand content.

We spoke to Aniruddha Mishra, Director of Growth at Node Media.

Expert opinion

Aniruddha Mishra, Director of Growth at Node Media

"The new branding feature from Meta can be extremely helpful in ensuring brands are displaying the fonts and colours as per the desired brand guidelines. Meta has been actively pushing these Advantage+ Creative Enhancements and at times forcing advertisers so they don't get an option to opt out. So this branding guideline feature definitely seems to be one in the right direction which can help in the mass adoption of this feature."

Meta: Target Frequency is now available for ads sets

Any ad sets using Reach or Thruplay as the performance goal now have the open to enable ‘Target Frequency’ controls in Meta. Target Frequency helps advertisers set an average weekly frequency. This figure can be adjusted according to how often you wish your audience to view your ads and was previously only applicable to campaigns lasting seven days or more.

This new update means advertisers now have more control over audiences sees their ads when using ‘Reach’ or ‘Thruplay’ as the performance goal. By setting this control at ad set level, brands can expect to manage their exposure more easily, prevent ad fatigue and optimise their reach for brand awareness and engagement campaigns.

So why is this update important? Enabling Target Frequency for these ad sets gives advertisers better control over how often their audiences sees their ads. If you experience fatigue or poor engagement, it might be worth testing. The potential downside could be that setting a strict target could limit reach if the audience size or budget is low, leading to fewer impressions than expected.

We spoke to Rimzan Faiz, Asst. Client Success Manager at Meta@RoarADX

Expert opinion

Rimzan Faiz, Asst. Client Success Manager at Meta@RoarADX

"Meta’s Target Frequency update in auction buying is a big step forward for advertisers, bringing frequency control that was previously only available in reservation buying, now in auction buying too. This gives brands more control over how often their ads are shown, helping advertisers better manage reach and repetition to drive stronger campaign results. It’s especially useful for objectives like brand recall and consideration, allowing advertisers to fine-tune delivery and optimize media spend more effectively. For users, this could lead to a more balanced ad experience by reducing both ad fatigue and underexposure. Instead of seeing the same ad too often or not enough, people will receive ads at a more consistent and effective pace. This update makes auction buying campaigns more predictable and impactful, giving marketers greater flexibility to drive meaningful results."

Meta launches chat with leads feature

Meta has launched a new chat feature available to advertisers launching lead-generation campaigns.

If selected during set-up, this feature allows advertisers to talk directly with any user who has submitted the form response.

A user who is served your form can opt into chat during their form completion, where a messenger conversation is immediately initiated once the form is submitted.

For clients and advertisers who focus on a lead generation basis for their business, this could be a vital tool for engaging and nurturing leads right at their warmest stage when they’re most interested.

We spoke to Natasha Leonards, Meta and Google ads strategist, about her opinion on this new feature:

Expert opinion

Natasha Leonards, Meta and Google Ads Strategist

"The “Chat with Leads” feature in META with instant forms could be game-changing for businesses. This will mean you can start instant communication via Messenger or Whatsapp with hot leads and nurture them quickly, or conversely you can quickly eliminate poor leads. Fast engagement with new leads is proven to convert them more successfully. Hence this is a really positive move for businesses generating leads."

Opportunity scores are making a comeback on Meta

About a year ago, Meta began testing opportunity scores. The tool ranks marketing campaign efforts, giving them a score between 0 – 100 to showcase how their campaign is set up to maximise performance. The closer to 100, the more optimised your campaigns (in theory). The score is influenced by various factors; however, Meta is now planning to push heavily towards utilising the Advantage+ suite.

With the rollout of the new tool, you can expect this to become a common addition to Advantage+ campaigns, featuring visual cues across the platform that encourage you to optimise your ads. We can expect to see a big shift towards Advantage+ optimisation.

We spoke to Emma Sowersby, Senior Paid Social Executive at Embryo, about her thoughts on the update:

Expert opinion

Emma Sowersby, Senior Paid Social Executive at Embryo

"It makes sense for Meta to be biased towards its features, but I’m not sure this push towards the Advantage+ suite is the best thing for everyone. Specific brands that are meticulous about their visual presence may find opportunity scores unhelpful. In my experience with the opportunity score tests, there was a significant focus on implementing creative changes, which was not an option for some clients. Advantage+ creative and flexible media doesn’t lend itself well to a brand that values consistent branding across its marketing channels. Additionally, broader targeting isn’t always better–particularly when testing different audiences to inform a wider strategy. My worry is that if brands are penalised for not using the Advantage+ suite, they would have to sacrifice their branding in order to maximise performance. For a lot of brands, this simply isn’t an option."

Advantage+ will now be default for Sales, App, and Leads campaigns

Meta has announced it’s testing a new streamlined way for Advantage+ setup for Sales, App and Lead campaigns. Currently, the campaign setup allows users to choose between Automated or Manual options. From now on, the default selection will be Advantage+. This means that by default, the following optimisations will be turned on:

• Advantage+ Audience
• Advantage+ Placements
• Advantage Campaign Budget

There is still the option to override these optimisations, which may disable Advantage+. Originally, we had the choice to switch from Advantage+ to original audiences, and now we can unselect a box to remove suggestions for certain audience types. 

It’s important to understand the shift that Meta is currently making towards removing all ‘traditional’ methods of targeting and replacing them with Advantage+ options. We expect to see more changes like we’ve seen over the past week.

‘Advantage+ Shopping’ campaigns will become ‘Advantage+ Sales’ campaigns

Advantage+ Shopping campaigns will now be known as Advantage+ Sales campaigns, emphasising a shift towards performance-driven advertising. 

Meta has launched a refreshed Meta Advantage+ campaign setup, removing the choice between ‘Advantage+’ and ‘Manual’ during campaign creation. When you create a new ‘Sales campaign’, you will notice that ‘Advantage+ sales campaign’ in the top right is toggled on. Any alterations made to this will disable it, transforming it into a ‘Manual sales campaign.’

Currently, when setting up a Sales campaign, Meta allows you to choose between creating an ‘Advantage+ shopping campaign’ and a ‘Manual sales campaign.’

This new update will remove this choice, and when setting up a new Sales campaign, it will default to configuration settings equivalent to those for creating an ‘Advantage+ sales campaign’. This implies that Advantage+ budget, audience, and placements will be enabled.

However, you will still have the option to disable specific Advantage+ controls, converting it into a ‘Manual’ sales campaign. Additionally, the usual features of a ‘Manual’ campaign will continue to be accessible in the new setup.

Meta is removing inactive admins from Meta Business Suite

Meta has begun automatically removing admin users from Meta Business Suite profiles if they’re inactive. This update will help businesses keep their accounts secure, preventing unauthorised activity.

Anyone with access to a business portfolio who has not logged into business tools like Meta Business Suite, Business Manager, Ads Manager, or any related app or integration in the past six months may be removed.

Additionally, any ad accounts that haven’t run any ads within the last 15 months risk being closed due to inactivity. If this happens, the primary payment method is removed, ads are turned off, and the account won’t be able to run or publish new ads. It’s also worth noting that ad accounts can’t be deleted from the portfolio.

After an inactive user has been removed from the account, someone with full control over the business portfolio has three months to reverse this action. This can be achieved by navigating to ‘Security Centre’ and ‘Completed Actions’, where you will find a list of recently removed users. You can select ‘Review’ and choose which users to re-add.

Meta launches updated affiliate link displays

Meta is increasing affiliate link exposure within reels, videos, photos and text posts. Prior to this update, affiliate links had to be included in comments instead. This update increases the visibility of affiliate links, which mirrors what we’re already seeing across TikTok, where affiliate links are front and centre, driving sales in the TikTok Shop. For brands, this could be an opportunity to expand affiliate offerings with creators, as it’s likely to get more reach. For creators, they’re going to have to find the balance between genuine content and content that appears to be overly commercialised and revenue-driven, as it very quickly highlights when they are working as an affiliate.

Expert opinion

Olivia Jones, Affiliate Manager at Embryo

"For brands, this update will have a positive affect on reach, click through rate and conversions and will make it easier to measure success more accurately from influencer campaigns. For influencers, especially micro-influencers who are still growing their audiences and building their platform, it enables them to monetize their content in an easier way. However, influencers need to ensure they still create a healthy mix of organic content as well as promoted content to remain authentic and relatable to their audience."

Threads test individual post analytics

Threads is testing more granular ways of analysing performance, by introducing individual performance analytics, as opposed to overall performance analytics.

According to threads: “People in the test can sort posts by the highest or lowest number of views, likes, and replies. People in the test can also see the breakdown of views and interactions (likes, replies, reposts, and quotes) by followers and nonfollowers for a specific post, and the number of new follows that resulted from it.”

Threads Chief says the new update should help people to build communities on the app by seeing whats resonating with their followers. It also goes hand in hand with a recent Threads update, which puts ‘more emphasis on posts from profiles that you’ve chosen to follow in the app’.

This will impact the level of analysis marketers are able to carry out on the platform, and will give them a closer look at whats resonating with different audiences.

Expert opinion

Megan Atkinson, Senior Paid Social Executive at Embryo

"It's really interesting to see the granular level of analytics Threads has introduced. In Paid Social, data is essential to allow us to understand what's working and what's not, so we can optimise accordingly and avoid wasting budget. An update like this will allow us to dive deeper into posts and decide which type of messaging is working with which audience. It will be interesting to see if other platforms such as Meta follow suit in 2025 and give us this level of insight."

Meta place restrictions on customer lists in the US

Meta is placing tighter restrictions on customer lists relating to housing, employment, financial products and services.

According to Meta, ‘Starting January 2025, there will be restrictions on customer list custom audiences for housing, employment, and financial products and services (including credit) campaigns for advertisers based in the US or reaching audiences in the US. These changes are designed to help you follow Meta Advertising Standards.’

‘Ad accounts within the same business portfolio that share customer list custom audiences should make sure that all people with permissions to manage ad campaigns have the same business email domain. If the domains don’t match, then those shared customer lists will be unavailable for ads about housing, employment, and financial products and services.’

From January 2025, any new campaigns not following the new restrictions may not be able to be published.

From March 2025, any existing campaigns not following the new restrictions may be paused.

Expert opinion

Jenny Byrne, paid social manager at Embryo

"With Meta's ever evolving changes to not only the ad platform but more specifically it's targeting, we have to be more savvy as advertisers in ensuring we can still serve ads to the most efficient and most relevant audiences. The change in US targeting coming in 2025, only further enhances the relevancy of audiences by adding layers of security and restrictions of which we must adhere to, protecting both the user as the receiver of the ad and the advertiser themselves too. Advertisers will now need to ensure their internal processes for using custom audience data is streamlined, but also adjust their approach to targeting audiences within the limitations by leaning on elements of advertising like broad audiences and specific creative, lookalikes and other targeting approaches."

Meta adds a new ‘in-app ad impressions’ conversion event

‘You can now optimize App campaigns to maximize the value of in-app ad impressions.’ 

You can select ‘in-app ad impressions’ as the conversion event when you use ‘Maximise value of conversions’ as the app promotion goal.

According to Meta, ‘This metric counts impressions on ads from a third-party platform that are visible within your mobile app and are attributed to your Meta ads based on information received from your Facebook SDK.’

The metric related to this will be ‘Cost per 1000 in-app ad impressions’- this is calculated similar to regular impressions by taking the total amount spent on an ad campaign, divided by in-app ad impressions, multiplied by 1000%. 

This update will allow marketers a more granular view of in-app activity.

Meta introduces ‘quick view’ reporting

Meta have introduced ‘quick view’ reporting, giving marketers an easier way to share a snapshot of their reports with colleagues and clients. 

According to Swipe Insight, ‘You can now share Quick Views in Meta Ads Reporting. When creating a Quick View, you can edit its settings and share it with others who have access to your ad account, allowing them to save and manage the view as well.’

The Quick View config panel enables you to edit and share the following:

• View Name
• View Description
• Columns for ads reporting
• Sorting
• Attribution settings
• Breakdowns
• Selected Filters

‘To share a view, use the new create/edit/share buttons located at the top right of Ads Manager. By clicking to share, you can copy a link to send to clients or colleagues, who can then save a copy of the view on their end.’

This will allow for more collaboration on accounts, giving everyone an easy way to clearly and quickly look at data.