Meta
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.
Read moreMeta: 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.
Read moreMeta Adds New Targeting Options for Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns
If you run Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns, there’s been a big update, allowing you to target users who have shown an interest in your product or service but are yet to make a purchase.
Under the Engaged Customers Audience Segment in reporting, it reads:
“You can now define your engaged customers using custom audiences. This allows you to receive reporting breakdowns for this audience.”
Custom audiences are people aware of your business or have interacted with your product/service but haven’t made a purchase yet, so this is a great way to retarget engaged customers and encourage them to convert.
In terms of reporting, this update will give you access to a new segment to view in Ads Manager when using the Breakdown Menu. Select Demographics and Audience Segments to show three separate rows for New Customers, Existing Customers, and Engaged Customers.
Some examples of Custom Audiences to add to these segments include…
Existing Customers:
- People who purchased or signed up for your services.
- Custom Audiences would include people who purchased on your website shop.
Engaged Customers:
- Website visitors or Facebook/Instagram shop product views.
Meta: New Advantage+ Creative Add Catalogue Items Feature
Meta is constantly looking for new features to add to their Advantage+ technology. The newest addition applies to their Advantage+ creative where marketers now have the option to add catalogue items to their images and videos when creating an ad.
This essentially looks like a different style of instant experience. The format of your ad will either look like a collection or a carousel depending on how this will be served to the end user.
Image Source: SearchEngineLand.com
For the collection format, the creative asset chosen will be the main image and then underneath will be all of the product cards in your chosen catalogue set. Remember the images for the product cards are scraped from your website so if you don’t like the primary image then you’ll need to update these.
Now you don’t have to opt into this feature. When you’re creating your ad, the Avantage+ Creative window will pop up and from there you will be able to select the option to turn off all optimisations. You don’t have to keep them all off either – you can test the different features to see how they affect your performance and then make the judgement on which features to keep for your ads.
Find Out MoreTop of Funnel Meta Campaigns Now Forced to use Audience Expansion – March 2024
Meta has started rolling out a new update that means that link clicks and landing page views campaigns will now automatically include audience expansion, with the advertiser being unable to turn this off.
Audience expansion is where your campaign will occasionally go beyond your specified detailed targeting (interests, age, gender etc.) if it believes it will drive better performance in doing so. This can be a fantastic tool when driving purchases, but falls down when looking at top of funnel campaigns.
If your ad is going after those most likely to click, outside of your set audience parameters, there could potentially be a lot of poor quality traffic coming through your ads. It might drive low cost clicks but they might be less likely to take an action after a click, may not fit your audience profile (think B2B businesses with specific industries) etc. The algorithm will go after the lowest cost action.
This is quite a big change and will need to be factored into discussions around paid social as a tool for driving high quality website traffic.
Find Out MoreMeta unveils five new lead generation ad tools for Facebook and Instagram – November 2023
Meta’s unveiling of five new lead-generation ad tools provides advertisers with powerful tools to drive business growth and foster meaningful connections with their target audience.
WhatsApp Lead Gen: Meta is expanding the lead opportunity to users via WhatsApp chats with businesses. This feature assists marketers in nurturing high-quality leads through messaging. Going forward, certain advertisers will have the opportunity to incorporate a Q&A flow directly within Ads Manager.
Instant form ad format. Allows users to explore and engage with multiple businesses simultaneously. For instance, upon registering for a bridal hair trial, users can effortlessly share their contact details with other businesses, such as a nail salon. This feature enhances convenience for users while expanding opportunities for small businesses to attract interested customers.
Calling leads on Facebook. Meta is currently experimenting with a new functionality on Facebook that enables businesses to directly contact leads, offering reassurance and showcasing their business details. Additionally, Meta is in the testing phase of Advantage+ for Lead Generation, a feature that enables full automation of lead generation campaigns through Meta Advantage. This empowers advertisers to employ AI across various campaigns which will help to improve performance.
Hubspot. To assist businesses in efficiently generating high-quality leads, Meta is introducing HubSpot as a new CRM integration partner, providing a simple click-through setup which will help to streamline the process further.
Find out moreMeta Launches Subscription Service For Instagram And Facebook – October 23
For consumers in Europe, Meta launched a monthly subscription service where users can pay to use Facebook and Instagram without ads being served to them, becoming an ad-free platform.
What does this mean for advertisers? Your audience pool becomes smaller. You have fewer people to target, and now the platform becomes more competitive which could mean you see your costs increase across the board. However, this is all dependent on consumers buying into this subscription, if demand for this service is low then there will be little impact on your current performance.
For users, this means that their data will not be processed or collected by Meta as there is no need for tailored advertising.
Find out more