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Performance Max Best Practices

December 7, 2023/in Google AdWords | Google Ads, Полезно/by Magdalena Dautova

In 2020, Google disclosed plans for a new goal-based campaign type, Performance Max (PMax), designed to help advertisers streamline their campaigns across all Google Ads channels. This innovation was officially rolled out in November 2021. This campaign type quickly gained popularity and changed the game for advertisers. But what exactly are the benefits of PMax, and can it really boost online performance?

Performance Max allows advertisers to use a single campaign to reach users across Google’s range of advertising channels – YouTube, Display, Search, Discover, and Gmail – to achieve their business goals, whether it be leads, sales, or traffic. It is really incremental, especially for businesses with limited budgets, and is highly automated, relying primarily on the Google algorithm. However, this means that we can do more than just set up the campaign, and it will generate the desired results. We can talk a lot about optimising this campaign type, but today, the focus is on the creative aspect, specifically banners and text messages.

As PMax can reach your customers across all of Google’s channels, we must consider and carefully select the creative materials needed for the set-up. The first and most crucial step is identifying our target audience based on interests and demographics.

Next, it’s time to set up our asset group. Three types of assets need to be added, and we will discuss each and every type, along with its best practices.

1.Texts

Similar to display campaigns, in PMax, we have to fill in short and long headlines, as well as descriptions.

Text requirements:

Headlines: 3-15 headlines, with a limit of 30 characters, without using punctuation marks such as question marks or exclamations.
Long headlines: 1-5 long headlines, with a limit of 30 characters, considering the same punctuation requirements as with short headlines.
Descriptions: 2-5 descriptions, with one of up to 60 characters and the rest of no more than 90 characters.
Business name: 1-25 characters.

Best practices for text assets in Pmax

Enhance text assets. Diversify the text messages to reach a broader audience. Users have changing behaviours and habits.
Use the maximum number of text assets. Using as many text assets as possible allows the algorithm to find the best combination for each user.
Unique selling proposition. What sets your business apart from the competition? Remember to emphasise it, as it’s the surefire way to grab the target audience’s attention.
Grab attention. Holding the user’s attention is becoming increasingly challenging. Doing so in the first few seconds is essential to generate better results.
Optimise texts if needed in case of low performance.

2.Images

In Performance Max campaigns, there are a total of six image assets available:

Landscape image
Square image
Portrait image
Square logo
Landscape logo

Formats need to align with the following specifications and requirements:

Landscape format (1.91:1) – minimum size 600x314px, recommended 1200x628px.
Square format (1:1) – minimum size 300x300px, recommended 1200x1200px.
Portrait format (4:5) – minimum size 480x600px, recommended 960x1200px.

The maximum number of banners is 20, and the maximum file size is 5120 KB.

Logo

The logo is used separately and can be in:

Square format (1:1) – minimum size 300x300px, recommended 1200x1200px.
Landscape format (4:1) – minimum size 512x128px, recommended 1200x300px.

The maximum number of images of your logo is 5, and the maximum file size is 5120 KB.

Design guidelines for your target audience

Emphasise the product or service that you promote in the banner.
Avoid using too much text. The inventory screen available on some display networks could be tiny. Therefore, long messages with small fonts can be challenging to read.
Engage your audience. We are bombarded with product banners daily, and users often ignore them until they encounter something engaging that triggers their emotions.
Unique selling proposition. It is crucial to highlight what sets you apart from your competitors. If you run ads for a shoe store, for instance, you should highlight the essence of what makes your product or service better.
Perform tests. Experimentation is crucial in advertising. What types of assets can you test with? Use, for instance, a banner with promotional text and one without it – the results may surprise you.
Automatic overlays. Avoid adding call-to-action buttons at the bottom of your banner since they could be overlayed with the automatic CTA buttons from the platform.
Avoid uploading photo collages or images with complex compositions.

Although campaign set-up and targeting are essential, banners also play a significant role in optimisation. Be sure to monitor your Pmax campaign, as Google Ads will start to provide information about your creative performance a few days after the campaign begins. Feel free to replace banners with low ratings instead of solely deleting them.

3.Videos

As mentioned earlier, with PMax, you can advertise on YouTube. There is a single type of video asset with the following requirements:

Ratio: horizontal, vertical or square.
Length: 10 seconds.
The video must be uploaded to YouTube.
Suggested quantity: up to 5 videos added to your Pmax campaign
When you do not add your own video, one may be generated for you by Google Ads.

*If you don’t have your own videos uploaded to YouTube, you can now create such within the Google Ads interface using your banners. There are ready-made templates to help you in the process.

Creating a compelling video

Use audio in your videos. Many people only listen to videos, especially with the picture-in-picture** feature, so engaging them with sound is crucial.
Use different formats. A new YouTube format – YouTube shorts – is gaining popularity. Adapting your videos to these formats will bring you additional reach.
Capture attention in the first 3-5 seconds while the “Skip ad” button is not yet visible.
Highlight your competitive advantages.

**Picture-in-picture (PiP) is a feature found in TV receivers, PCs and smartphones, consisting of a video stream playing within an inset window, freeing the rest of the screen for other tasks.

Performance Max campaigns are an excellent way to maximise results and explore the engaged audience. However, careful selection of materials according to your product/service specifications and target audience, as well as occasional optimisation, are crucial.

Follow our YouTube channel and see how to create a new asset group in a PMax campaign. Watch the video here.

Auto-Apply Recommendations in Google Ads

October 20, 2023/in Google AdWords | Google Ads, Полезно/by Nelly Samardzhieva

Online advertising helps you target your ads to the profile of customers you want and filter out those who don’t. If you advertise with Google Ads or plan to do so, you should know how to use the Recommendations tab by Google.

The recommendations tab is an entire section dedicated to helping you improve your performance. Each recommendation provides customized suggestions to help you increase your campaign’s performance.

However, it’s important to note that not all recommendations are suitable for all businesses. Each business has a unique goal, strategy, and user journey. Therefore, it’s essential to carefully review and evaluate the recommendations in the context of your specific business case before implementing them.

This article outlines our agency’s best practices of dos and don’ts in activating Google’s recommendations.

Types of Recommendations and How They Work

The Recommendations page analyzes your account’s performance history, campaign settings, and Google trends to generate automatic suggestions for your active campaigns. Recommendations typically fall into several categories:

Repairs are recommendations related to the settings of your accounts, campaigns, and ads.
Bidding and Budgets usually suggest increasing your daily budget or changing your bidding strategy.
Keywords and targeting suggest modifying the targeting of a specific ad group, adding new keywords or modifying existing ones, and changing their match type.
Ads and Assets indicate a need to rewrite your ads or add extensions to help improve your ad performance. You could optimize headlines, descriptions and landing pages and add images or videos.
Measurement provides recommendations and changes related to measuring and analyzing the effectiveness of your campaigns. Suggestions include settings to track conversions (Conversion actions), automated bidding strategies (Smart Bidding), Google Analytics configuration, and other aspects of performance analysis.

Applying Recommendations Automatically

Auto-Apply recommendations are a feature that automatically applies recommendations from the Recommendation tab to your advertising campaigns without your manual approval. Google suggests optimization suggestions based on your campaign settings and performance and will only auto-apply your pre-set recommendations.

While auto-apply recommendations save time from manual work, the disadvantages are that they only sometimes work according to your business goals and, at times, require more manual control.

Below is a list of AARs we don’t suggest activating:

Add responsive search ads & Improve your responsive search ads allows Google to generate new ads or change existing ones, including adding new headlines or descriptions. Even though Google uses semantic search to understand search queries, we can only partially rely on it to build grammar structures and spell words correctly in Bulgarian.
Remove redundant keywords removes keywords Google considers inappropriate. For instance, identical words or phrases may appear in multiple match types (e.g., both in broad and exact match). Activating this recommendation may not be the best option for your account, as the platform doesn’t always consider your business specifics or strategy.
Add new keywords & Add broad match keywords. These are two settings where Google adds new keywords or upgrades existing ones to broad match. Recently, Google’s been recommending upgrading to broad match types as it helps identify related queries. Once again, this option should be considered only in your business context. Regardless of the keywords match types that you use, ensure keyword selection is well controlled. Otherwise, you’ll be spending your budget on irrelevant search queries.
Expand search campaigns to display network suggests expanding your campaigns’ visibility to Google’s display network, using unspent Search budgets. Search and Display typically serve different advertising goals, campaign characteristics and audience types. We strongly advise creating separate Search and Display campaigns with their own budgets and settings.
Change Bidding provides suggestions related to modifying your bidding strategy. Some of them are relatively safe to activate, but generally, changing the bidding strategy is a significant strategic step for your account that you should be able to manually control in the context of your business.

Monitoring Performance with Auto-Apply Recommendations

If you decide to activate any of the automatic settings, click the Campaigns icon in your Google Ads account. In the top right corner, click Auto-apply, which will take you to a separate menu where you can review the settings you want to implement.

Another option for activation is within the Recommendations tab, where you can select any of the suggestions from the list and choose “Apply” or “Apply all”.

After activation, it’s essential to check the automatic changes applied periodically. You can do so from the menu on the left, navigate to “Change history,” use the “Auto applied” filter, and inspect all the changes made for the selected period.

Follow Accella Digital’s YouTube channel for more information on Auto-Apply recommendations:

– > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJRTxnlXhlM

Just like all other features, Auto-Apply Recommendations are not inherently good or bad. Depending on your account goal and expected business results, you have the flexibility to determine what’s right for you, but make sure you monitor any changes Google makes closely.
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YouTube Advertising: Target Frequency Campaigns

October 6, 2023/in Google AdWords | Google Ads, Полезно/by Magdalena Dautova

In 2023, YouTube advertising became even more prevalent than ever. We’ve all been exposed to ads appearing before, during and after videos, with advertisers balancing the ad experience delivery and reaching the proper audience. Depending on the stage of your marketing funnel, there are a few campaign types you can choose from (Awareness, Consideration, Action), as well as a couple of ad formats. Today, we’ll take a closer look at the Target frequency campaign type.

Target frequency is an optimisation solution with which you can reach more people with your brand awareness campaigns. It is used for driving higher ad viewership on YouTube when building your Video reach campaign.

Following the campaign creation steps, you can choose a frequency goal of up to four per week with the YouTube algorithm optimising towards maximum unique reach at that desired frequency.

Target frequency campaigns support the following ad formats:

Bumper ads

Bumper ads are 6 seconds or shorter in duration and play before, during and after other videos. Viewers do not have the option to skip the ad.

Skippable ads

Skippable ads play before, during and after other videos. After 5 seconds, the viewer has the option to skip the ad.

Non-skippable ads

Non-skippable in-stream ads appear before, during and after other videos, usually 15 seconds or shorter. Viewers do not have the option to skip the ad.

If you don’t have a video available for your YouTube campaign, you can create one from the templates in the Google Ads interface.

Benefits and Drawbacks of This Optimisation Solution

Benefits:

Increases brand awareness: By optimising the frequency of your YouTube ads, you can raise brand awareness among your target audience.
Improves ad effectiveness: Frequency optimisation can enhance the effectiveness of your YouTube ads by ensuring that the right audience sees the message, increasing the likelihood of desired actions like website visits or purchases.
Reduces ad fatigue: Excessive ad exposure can lead to ad fatigue, making users less responsive to your message. Optimisation can minimise ad fatigue by limiting the number of ad views to the same audience.
Saves budget: By optimising ad frequency, you can avoid wasting your budget on ineffective videos, maximising your return on investment and achieving campaign goals with a smaller budget.
Increases engagement: Showing ads to the right audience at the right frequency can increase brand engagement, leading to more social shares, likes, and comments, ultimately boosting visibility on YouTube.
Improves targeting: Target Frequency can improve your targeting by showing ads to viewers most likely to be interested in your product or service, improving overall campaign effectiveness.

Drawbacks:

You can set up only one ad group per campaign.
Media buying is solely on a CPM basis (cost for 1,000 impressions).
Lower Reach: If the target frequency is set too low, the target audience may not see the ad often enough, reducing its effectiveness.
Missed opportunities: Setting the frequency cap too low may cause you to overlook potential customers who would’ve responded to the message if they had seen it more times.
Increased costs: Setting the frequency cap too high, on the other side, could increase costs as you’ll pay for more impressions. It could lead to a lower ROI, especially if only some of your impressions delivered the desired results.
Ad fatigue: While Target frequency aims to prevent ad fatigue, when your campaign is not optimised and the frequency cap is set too high, it can lead to “ad fatigue,” causing ad blindness with users not responding to your message.

Best practices to help you achieve results:

Add more videos to your ad inventory.
Target a broader audience, and avoid setting negative targeting and managed placements.
Test and optimise your campaign towards finding the optimal frequency that works best for you.
Monitor the performance metrics of your ads to make timely adjustments and improve effectiveness.
Run your campaign for at least seven days.

In conclusion, Target frequency can be a powerful tool for achieving your business goals. However, to make it work in your favour, you must consider the benefits and drawbacks of this strategy and whether it aligns with the goals you want to achieve.

How to Protect Your Facebook Account from Hackers

September 29, 2023/in Facebook, Полезно/by Nelly Samardzhieva

If you haven’t experienced it alone, you surely know someone whose Facebook ad account got hacked. Be cautious and read before you act, especially if you receive an email requiring you to log in to the platform and take specific actions.

Real cases from Accella Digital clients inspire our article, and we hope it helps improve your security and know-how on what to do in case of a potential account takeover.

One of the most common and straightforward methods for stealing personal information is through so-called phishing attacks. Attackers usually reach out via email pretending to be a legitimate source or entity, such as a social network account executive, bank or online store owner, etc. These emails almost always follow the same structure and message: urging you to take immediate action, often requiring that you submit your personal information (email, password, bank details, login information) through an external link.

Answering their inquiry may result in losing your account access in seconds, potentially damaging your business.

Here is what the anatomy of a phishing email may look like:

The email subject attracts attention and usually has a high open rate;
The business name is displayed, which helps make the email look legitimate;
The fonts and layouts are identical to the ones used in the original Facebook newsletters;
The email contains a compelling phrase for a required action within a fixed timeframe, thus creating a sense of urgency, which increases the chances for the user to initiate the “verification” process.

Always double-check the sender’s email address. This is the quickest and easiest way to verify if the message is a scam. In case of doubt, we recommend sending any suspicious emails to be reviewed by your advertising agency or marketing specialist before taking further action. Often, scam emails warn you about disapproved ads or payment status issues and do not typically require you to enter your credentials or initiate any specific action.

Here are a few tips on how to protect your business accounts on Facebook:

1. Review Admin Access to Your Facebook Page or Ad Account and Enable Mandatory Two-Factor Authentication

The best way to safeguard against cyberattacks and malicious practices is to ensure you apply the highest level of security to your ad account, as well as review account access occasionally.

What is Two-Factor Authentication?

Two-factor authentication (2FA) is an additional layer of security where a second action from the user is required to prove their identity in addition to the regular login password.

There are several options to choose from to activate your two-factor authentication:

– Via SMS: This is the easiest and most convenient method. When Facebook detects an attempt to log in from an unfamiliar device or browser, it sends a security code via SMS.

-Security Key: A small hardware device which can be used to help keep your Facebook account secure. It is often used on top of other 2FA methods.

– Authenticator App/Code Generator: An additional application installed on your phone that generates access codes that change every few seconds.

From the image below, you can see where to navigate in your account to activate two-factor authentication.

This step is mandatory, especially when it comes down to business accounts with linked bank details. Authentication can be activated for all users in your business account.

Facebook.com/privacy/checkup/

Review Your Account Access

You should occasionally review your account access, especially if you notice any unusual activity. If you see someone you may not know has administrative access to your ad account, you should take immediate action. Otherwise, there is a risk you may have your access removed and get locked out of your account.

We also advise you to keep at most 2-3 users with admin access to your ad account.

2. Phishing Emails And How to Detect Them

Unusual Email Address

The sender’s email address contains misspellings. If you receive a message that requires your personal information or click on external links, always keep in mind to verify the sender’s address.

Suspicious External Links

If you still click the external link provided in the email, it may lead you to a page where you will be asked to enter your personal information. When you examine the web address closer, you may notice any misspellings, awkward spacing and strange email layouts.

Insecure HTTP Connections

A website should always be secured with HTTP encryption when it processes sensitive information, such as personal data and passwords. However, HTTP doesn’t guarantee security, as hackers sometimes may exploit it since data transmitted over it is sent in plain text and can be read by anyone with access to the network traffic, including cyber criminals.

3. Reach Out to Your Advertising Agency

If you are still trying to decide whether to trust a particular email, you can always contact your digital agency to help verify its legitimacy.

If you already provided your personal information upon the hacker’s request and were locked out of your account, it is essential to react promptly.

We at Accella Digital are familiar with such malicious practices and have helped our clients regain their account control.

What to Do If You’ve Been Hacked:

1. Remove Account Access to People in Case of Suspicious Activity

A swift and timely response is needed in this case. The first step is to log into your profile while you still have admin rights and remove account access for the hackers.

Earlier in the article, we mentioned where to navigate in your Facebook Business Manager to locate user access. Here is how you can remove a user:

Freeze the Credit Card Used in Your Ad Account

If you’ve already lost access to your ad account, what’s next is to contact your bank to alert them of the breach and freeze the credit card paying for your ads. This way, even if you’ve lost access to your account, you will prevent your card from getting drained of funds and the possibility of hackers running ads with stolen money.

3. Disconnect Your Business Page from Your Business Manager

Since the Business Manager is the most valuable asset for hackers, it’s important to disconnect it from your Business page. This approach applies in specific cases, so we mark it as optional. First, ensure no other suspicious profiles run as admins in your account.

4. Contact Facebook Support for Assistance

Since Facebook support receives a high volume of inquiries daily, resolving the issue may take some time. Don’t let this discourage you, as the chance to regain your account access is high.

You can contact Facebook support from here:

https://www.facebook.com/business/help/support

Hacker attacks have become more advanced and skillfully crafted in recent years. However, if we regularly monitor our ad accounts and stay alert, we can save ourselves future headaches and surf the vast waves of the Internet space smoothly and peacefully.
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Meta Ads Manager Updates That Dominated 2022

January 25, 2023/in Facebook, Полезно/by Magdalena Dautova

We have already seen quite a few Instagram and Facebook updates throughout 2022, and one thing we know for sure about Meta features – change is the only constant. In the world of marketing and global technology, change is something natural. It provokes us to step out of our comfort zone as advertisers and adapt to the changing marketing landscape.

Marketers are heading into 2023 with more automation, powerful new capabilities and seamless experiences across Meta platforms. Keep reading to find out what changed.

1. Change to Meta Ads Manager Objectives
When choosing your campaign objective, think carefully about the one that best suits your business goals.

Campaign Objectives Before

Campaign Objectives Now

We can now choose from six simplified campaign objectives: Awareness, Traffic, Engagement, Leads, App Promotion, and Sales. Previously, we only had Awareness, Consideration and Conversion.

Some previous objectives will now be available as a feature or optimization setting when creating your ad set.

Detailed Targeting Options

Meta strives to personalize the platform and make it more user-friendly by removing some Detailed Targeting options related to politically or culturally polarizing topics. These include sexual orientation, race, religion, health, ethnicity and political affiliation. You can still target by interests and behaviour without the risk of touching on sensitive topics like the ones listed above.

Advantage functions

In August, Meta launched several new tools to help you quickly create more automated ads:

Advantage+ creatives automatically adjust ad creative for each person who views your ad. The platform shows them the version to which they will most likely respond, delivering better ad performance.
Advantage audience creates a personalized audience based on your Page details.
Advantage+ App Campaigns also had several new updates to increase the performance of app install campaigns. These updates include more creative flexibility, 7-day-click attribution capabilities to improve campaigns with longer attribution windows and more granular reporting insights.
Advantage Campaign Budget is the well-known Campaign Budget Optimization option under a new name. It offers a way of optimizing the distribution of a campaign budget across your campaign’s ad sets.

Tailored Sales Campaign creation

You’ve likely come across this campaign type in the past few months. Here is some update from Meta about how it functions.

It offers a more straightforward setup.
It is a tailored solution that will drive results for your business.
It uses Meta’s best practices as pre-set functions.

The pre-set functions include:

Campaign objective: Sales
Bidding strategy: Lowest price
Dynamic Creative: On*
Placements: Automatic
Ad optimization: Conversions
Attribution window: 7-day-click or 1-day-view

You can customize the following options:

Location
Budget and ad schedule
Audience

*Dynamic creative uses images, videos, text, and audio and combines them in new ways to improve the effectiveness of your ad.

If you want more control using standard settings, go ahead with the second option – Manual Sales Campaign, which will redirect you to the familiar Conversions campaign settings.

Meta announced new updates to its call ads intended for businesses to find more quality leads and reach potential customers to grow their business.

Call ads in Sales Objective
60s call ad in Lead generation, Traffic and Sales Objectives. Ads are optimized to reach people most likely to engage in an extended conversation.

Instagram Ads

In recent months, users started to engage even more with videos, with TikTok becoming the leading platform. Meta has already launched Reels globally and has a dedicated section for them. But what has changed in the way we advertise and utilise videos on Instagram? Here are a few updates:

Removing Instagram In-Stream Video Ad Placements and replacing them with Reels
Adding free, high-quality audio for Carousel Ads in Instagram Reels
Instagram Ads showing on Explore and Profile Feeds sections
Introducing Augmented Reality Ads which are currently in an open beta

What to expect in 2023?

Metaverse will continue to unlock new opportunities for advertisers and businesses. Here are a few updates we could expect in the upcoming year.

More emphasis on Advantage features since Facebook is looking to automate ad setup features and thus facilitate businesses.
Data privacy is becoming more crucial. Android is likely to follow iOS 14.5 with more control over data privacy which will prevent data collection from Facebook Pixel. In the eyes of data regulations, CAPI (Facebook’s Conversions API) offers a promising alternative and should be implemented as soon as possible by businesses to continue to optimize advertising on Meta.
Further investments are to be made in the Metaverse with a more specific emphasis on video and virtual reality technologies. Although Meta’s push to develop virtual and augmented reality technology has had a bumpy year so far, we are still to see what 2023 will offer.

Our agency manages results-driven digital campaigns, and we are here to guide you through platform updates and manage your digital campaigns in the best way possible. If you have any questions or would like to schedule an online meeting, don’t hesitate to contact us.

Accella Digital ranks among the top 3% of companies awarded the Google Premier Partners status for 2022

February 9, 2022/in Google AdWords | Google Ads, Полезно/by admin

This month, Google announced the achievements of its top-performing digital marketing partners worldwide. Our agency achieved the 2022 Premier Partner status, placing us among the top 3% of Google’s Partners that meet the new, more rigorous program requirements. Achieving this status underlines our dedication to managing results-driven digital campaigns and helping our clients achieve continuous growth and development.

What is the Google Premier Partner Program

Google Premier Partner is a special recognition by Google for advertising agencies with a demonstrated ads skill and expertise meeting higher ad spend requirements as well as certification and performance requirements that go beyond the standard Google Partner status (Google Partners).

“Congratulations to our Premier Partners for being among the first 3% of the Google Partners in Bulgaria. These companies stand out based on their commitment to developing product expertise, building new client relationships and helping existing clients grow. We look forward to supporting them as they help their clients succeed online.”

– Davang Shah, Global Managing Director, Google Ads Marketing

How to become a Premier Partner

The Google Partners program has undergone significant changes in 2022, including redefining what it means to be a Premier Partner through new, expanded requirements and offering Premier Partners unique benefits to help them grow and succeed with Google Ads.

To be recognized as a Google Premier Partner, agencies must meet strict requirements such as:

Investment in Google Ads measured by ad spend and acquired revenue across managed accounts
Agency growth measured by the number and size of associated Google Ads accounts
Ability for partners to acquire new clients and maintain current ones
A team of specialists who have passed the Google certification exams

Benefits of being a Google Premier Partner

Being a Google Premier Partner for 2022 comes with a whole host of benefits that positively impact both us as an advertising performer and the results we achieve for our clients.

As a Google Premier Partner, we benefit from:

Access to the most current beta versions of Google Ads features
Access to the most up-to-date information on market research, trends, best practices and changes in the Google Ads platform
High-value promotional offers with which our new clients get up to BGN 700 for free on top of their advertising budget
Access to 24-hour Google Ads support, which help us quickly and efficiently solve client challenges
Access to selected industry events, such as an invitation to the Google Partners Annual Meeting

For our clients, this means we have the necessary prerequisites to work optimally with Google to support and nurture our client campaigns.

Changes in Facebook Ads throughout 2021

February 4, 2022/in Facebook, Полезно/by Mariya Atanasova

As a tradition, we’re sharing our annual blog update on the leading changes for the past year on Facebook (or Meta as it’s known now). In the advertising and social media field, changes are constant and dynamic, so to use the platforms to their full potential, we need to be up to date with their latest feature updates.

In today’s article, we have selected and summarized the significant updates and changes in 2021 that are important to keep in mind when working on the Facebook platform.

How Apple’s iOS 14 release may affect your ads

Changes in conversion reporting

Measuring the web and app events from people using iOS 14 or further devices is allowed only with Facebook’s new Aggregated Event Measurement protocol.

Limit to the use of 8 conversion events per domain

Before optimizing your campaigns for a specific action with Aggregated Event Measurement, you need to verify your domain. You also have the option to configure up to 8 events in Events Manager that your campaigns can optimize for.

Changes in user data reports for targeting

For both app and web conversions, the delivery and action breakdowns, such as age, gender, geographic region and ad placement are not currently supported.

New Attribution Window

28-day click-through, 28-day view-through and 7-day view-through attribution windows are not supported for active campaigns. Except for iOS 14+ app promotion campaigns and automated rules, the 7-day click attribution window can be modified by you to one of the other windows that are still supported. The following windows are supported under the new attribution setting:

– 1-day click or view

– 7-day click or view

– 1-day click

– 7-day click (default)

The extent to which this change may affect reporting varies from business to business and by product segment. If most conversions happen within the 7-day attribution period, the change in reporting should not be that significant (especially if you use broad targeting for cheaper and/or free products that lead to quicker conversions ). The most robust difference can be observed in businesses offering products in a higher price range or customer paths taking longer to fulfill. In such a case, the final purchase will likely fall outside the 7-day attribution period.

Increasing the cost per click (CPC)
Increase in cost per click was an expected result given the number of businesses that turned to the e-commerce business model and the change in consumer behaviour due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

The main reasons are several:

Facebook inventory is limited.

More retailers have shifted their focus to e-commerce business model, leading to more competition on the Google platform.

CPM increase

The number of advertisers and ad competition in the inventory of Facebook is increasing. At the same time, search interest remains constant, which leads to an increase in CPM (cost per impression) for your ads. CPM later determines your ad CPC (cost per click). In this case, you don’t necessarily need to invest higher budgets in the platform. What you need is a digital marketing strategy adapted to your business goals.

Ad quality matters

Ads with a more generic message and creative may often lead to ad fatigue. Facebook may also restrict your ability to advertise on its platform if its algorithm detects your ad is not delivering a diversified and engaging user experience.

Optimize delivery for Conversion leads in your Lead generation campaigns

You can now choose to optimize to increase the quality of your leads. Facebook will show your ad only to people in your target audience who are most likely to become customers.

New “Optimize Text Per Person” Option

When activated, this new feature will choose whether to highlight the primary caption, the headline or the description text to each user, based on what Facebook’s system determines this user will best respond to. This new feature is similar to how Responsive Search Ads function in the Google Ads inventory.

With this enabled, any business (whether small or medium) can now deliver a more personalized advertising experience to each user. You only need to select the “Optimize text per person” option at an ad level, and the algorithm will do the optimization for you.

Ads optimized for calls
Facebook offers the ability to optimize your ads for calls, resulting in better ad performance and lower cost per call. Creating ads optimized for calls is available in two types of campaigns – Traffic and Lead generation. In the Traffic campaign, you must navigate to the ad level, select Phone Call, and then enter the country and phone number.

Facebook changes Call ads Accella Digital Blog
For a Lead generation campaign, you can find the settings at the ad set level, where you need to select “Calls”.

Facebook Targeting Expansion becomes default

Facebook is making a change to target users more broadly. This is a big change that could lead to more results but may also upset advertisers wanting to limit targeting to a smaller group.

Targeting Expansion will be turned on automatically when optimizing for conversions, value or app events while using the Conversions objective. When Targeting Expansion is turned on automatically in these cases, advertisers will not be able to turn it off.

If you optimize for actions other than conversions, value, or app events, Тargeting Еxpansion will be turned off by default. Still, it can be turned on later (other than in the situations described earlier).

Targeting Expansion is available for all objectives besides for Reach and Brand Awareness campaigns. Also, it cannot be used when promoting a Special Ad Category.

With Targeting Expansion, Facebook is directing potential advertisers to use the broad targeting option more. It is a great feature that has the potential to drive better results, but it can limit advertisers who would like to narrow the targeting in their strategy.

Facebook changes the way it counts user profiles for advertising purposes

Facebook is changing the way it counts user profiles for advertising purposes. Users who do not explicitly link their Facebook and Instagram accounts in the Facebook Account Center will now be treated as two separate people for the purposes of ad planning and management.

As a result, a slight increase could be noticed in the Estimated Audience Size and reach across the two platforms (Facebook and Instagram) as it counts some users twice.

Potential Reach Changes to Estimated Audience Size at an Ad Set

Facebook has also changed how it displays audience reach estimates at an ad set level. Previously we saw an approximate range of 100,000 people within our ad targeting. Now we may have an approximate range of 100,000-200,000.
This update has no direct impact on ad serving. The only thing that changes is the way audience size is visualized.

Advertisers on Facebook, Messenger, and Instagram will no longer be able to target teens based on their interest

As of August 23, 2021, detailed targeting, custom audiences, lookalike audiences, and saved audiences can no longer target users under the age of 18 globally, 20 in Thailand and 21 in Indonesia. It is important to note that these changes also affect Reach and Frequency campaigns, as the audience size decreases.

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