If you are like most other performance marketers, you are always on your toes to adjust to the new digital advertising ecosystem, as it becomes more difficult to achieve and measure the real results. To help improve ad performance and to use machine learning in this new environment, Meta has developed Performance 5 – a simple yet strategic framework that will help increase the effectiveness of your ad dollars on the Meta platforms right now.
The five pillars of the Meta Performance 5 framework are:
- Account Simplification
- Creators for Direct Response
- Creative Diversification
- Conversion API Quality Check
- Business Results Validation
1. Account Simplification
Meta recommends taking a broader, rather than narrower, focus to account setup and structure in order to give its algorithm more space to do wonders. Earlier, you had to manually create multiple campaigns and ad sets which caused redundancy.
By simplifying your account structure, you allow Meta’s machine learning to auto-test which creative and ad placements drive the best results so that they can optimize for you in real-time.
According to a case study, Codeway, the Turkish software company, increased subscriptions by 32% after using custom event optimization for its Facebook and Instagram ads to help reach potential customers with the highest lifetime value. Codeway’s custom event optimization campaign helps it attract customers for the long term. Between August 22 – September 14, 2022, the campaign achieved:
- 32% more incremental subscriptions, compared to the usual strategy
- 19% decrease in cost per incremental high-value customer acquisition, compared to the usual strategy
- 20% higher predicted lifetime value of newly acquired customers, compared to the usual strategy.
This simpler account setup has two main benefits. First, it gives Meta’s algorithm a broader audience to find the best users for you. Second, it gets your ad sets out of their Learning Phase which means that your ad sets delivery becomes more stable quickly. According to Big Barker, taking these steps lead to a 30% increase in add-to-carts and a 26% lower cost per add-to-cart.
2. Creators for Direct Response
Today, creators are more than influencers, they are builders of culture and community who help drive business outcomes for brands. This has led to a new form of advertising: creators for direct response. This strategy encourages brands to leverage the trust, authenticity, and originality of creators to launch Branded Content ads on Meta technologies. These ads empower creators and brands to work together and help build connections with existing and new customers. An internal study across 12 ecommerce advertisers shows that adding Branded Content Ads to advertisers’ media mix has driven an average sales lift of 39% and a 19% lower median vs. the target CPA.
Facebook recommends not just creating user-generated ads but using something called creative content ads, which is similar to whitelisting. They suggest if you are new to whitelisted ads try to invest 10% of your budget on these ads, but if you have tried it and see traction, invest 50% of your budget.
3. Creative Diversification
Across the board, advertisers are seeing success with creative diversification. As the consumers watch the same ads over and over again, they get tired and this leads to creative fatigue. There are two main categories of strategies to combat this:
- Creative Format: This is about incorporating new, engaging ad formats and placements. For example, you might consider testing video if that’s something you haven’t tried or testing into one of the newer creative formats, like Reels. UGC-style ads, videos, and reels, are all great examples of ad types that can help you connect with customers in a more personal way and boost up performance.
- Creative Concept: This is about incorporating new messaging and tones into your creative mix. If you’re trying to reach a specific audience, work to ensure the concept of your creative will resonate with that audience.
Advertisers who tried creative diversification saw two main benefits: 32% more efficient DR outcomes and 9% incremental reach.
4. Conversion API Quality Check
The Conversions API creates a direct and reliable connection between Meta and your marketing data. Facebook recommends aiming for a score of good or great when it comes to event match quality. Conversions API helps optimize ad targeting and personalization, decreases cost per action and more accurately measures campaign outcomes. There are 2 important technical areas that your team should look out for better Meta media performance:
- Redundant event set ups: This involves using both Conversions API and the Meta Pixel. When you use the Conversions API along with the pixel, it creates a more reliable connection that helps the delivery system decrease your cost per action.
- Improving the Event Match Quality Score: A higher EMQ score means events are more likely to match to a Meta account, which can help you see more of your conversions and lower your cost per result.
5. Business Results Validation
The last-click cookie-based attribution models don’t measure the full value of advertising, as they fail to account for the power of the cross device consumer behavior. On the other hand, an analysis showed on average, last click attribution undervalues Facebook and Instagram by 47%. This is the reason to recommend Conversion Lift, which will help you understand the true, causal impact of your investment on Meta. Conversion Lift uses a gold-standard methodology to capture the causal impact that Facebook, Instagram and Audience Network ads have on business performance that addresses measurement challenges marketers face such as over-reliance on clicks and shift to mobile browsing.
In combination, implementing these ad approaches can have a big impact on your Facebook and Instagram ad performance, and it’s worth taking note of Meta’s recommendations.
We are looking forward to seeing small and midsize businesses adopt the strategies outlined by Meta’s Performance 5 framework in the world of digital advertising to drive success for their businesses in 2023 and beyond.
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