By Kendra Pennington, Account Lead
At 3Q Digital, we have bi-weekly Social Advertising training sessions lead by our robust social team. This week, we covered a ton of the recent changes to Facebook, and thought they’d be valuable to share on the blog.
Without further ado: enjoy! (And hat tip to my colleague, Dippy, who helps put the trainings together.)
New pixel
Facebook’s new pixel affords us the ability to create custom conversion events; remarketing, and conversion tracking all in one. Find out what has changed here.
Some notes about the new pixel:
- You must adopt it by the second half of 2016. Might as well get started early.
- It’s required if you have an e-commerce client looking to run dynamic product ads.
New ad units
There are three (sort of four) new units: lead gen ads; slideshow ads; 360 video ads; and carousel ads (which aren’t new but are coming on super-strong).
- Lead gen ads: auto-filled form within the platform. They’re available now on mobile and soon to be on desktop.
- Slide show: appears as a video but created with single images compiled together. Great workaround to create and use gifs for ads.
- 360 video ads: allows users to see a 360 view of the ad using their mouse; this unit is not widely available yet.
- Carousel ads: usage has significantly increased in the past year with it being used for various purposes. Many examples for multi-use cases can be found here.
New Ads Manager and Power Editor
The major improvement to Power Editor is that you no longer need to download it. It is now browser-based and much more directly integrated with Ads Manager. You are still required to upload new changes.
What did we learn about the platform?
- The ideal Lookalike seed audience size is now much smaller than it used to be. Previously, you needed around 70K to produce good matches, but now 1-5K produces a stronger seed audience.
- Best practices are ALWAYS evolving: algorithmic changes can affect delivery. This requires re-assessment of bids, budgets, and strategies to guarantee you are finding the most efficiencies for your client.
- Bid types have changed, but we are still learning about performance impact. As always, we suggest that you test to guarantee your current selection is still the most efficient.
-CPC bids were previously charged when users clicked on any and all clicks on the ads (likes, comments, shares, as well as clicks on the ad that lead off-site), but now you will be charged for a click only when the user actually clicks on the ad and is led off-site
- oCPM bidding is now labeled slightly different in the UI but essentially functions the same.
What’s next?
There’s no let-up as far as updates are concerned; look for these to come your way soon:
– Addition of context cards for lead gen ads:
- Once clicking through a lead gen ad and prior to landing on the lead gen form, you will be prompted with a page of additional context about the form.
- Emphasis on native experience: Facebook is looking for ways to keep the post-ad-click experience native to the platform. For example, native ecommerce experience that occurs within Facebook’s UI is a much faster and more seamless experience than a mobile shopping site.
- Formal a/b testing
- Rules-based automation in Power Editor (which sounds similar to rules in AdWords)
- Dynamic creative optimization
Those are all the pressing updates we’ve noticed. What’s your favorite new feature? Let us know in the comments.
