Updates from the 2024 Meta Agency Summit
PSA: Meta recently came out with some new information that will change the way you run ads. Advantage+ Shopping campaigns are gaining speed, interest targeting is limited, Reels are still hot but not without a few twists — and more. Read on for the biggest takeaways from the 2024 Meta Agency Summit.
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Every year, Meta runs an event where leaders in digital advertising come together and discuss the current marketing landscape. It usually leads to some big revelations on how to proceed with social media advertising for the following year. This year, to no one’s surprise, it was all about AI.
The most interesting outcome from the summit was the idea that the marketing funnel as we know it is dead. Customers no longer take a predictable, linear journey from awareness to loyalty; the funnel is now more like a web.
There are many reasons why the journey has changed; we’re interacting on multiple touchpoints, content is increasingly personalised, and brands are engaging directly with customers.
All this is to say that marketers and platforms must adapt: and Meta is doing so in a big way. You kinda need to unlearn much of what you’ve been taught… Buckle up.
Key Learnings
To help advertisers optimise ad campaigns on Facebook and Instagram, Meta gave some insights based on this new ‘marketing web’ . There’s a strong focus on giving Meta more control over audiences, letting its machine learning algorithms to optimise performance with a more hands-off approach. Three of our biggest takeaways were:
Consolidation
Basically, run less campaigns and ad sets. The current recommendation if you’re setting up a manual campaign is to create broad audiences instead of overly defining interest-based parameters. By broad, we mean only specifying a (pretty large) age range, location, and maybe 1-3 of the most important interests/behaviours if really necessary.
Automation
Meta is focusing a lot of effort into evolving its AI audience targeting. Now, you can achieve great results by guiding AI to make the best choices, rather than manually inputting parameters yourself.
While broad audiences in manual campaigns still work, the experts are hinting that you should let the algorithm find the most relevant audiences with Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns (if you’re an e-commerce business). To be honest, we’ve seen mixed results. It can be slow on the uptake but conversions can snowball once Meta has a chance to find its feet.
Creative Diversification
This should be a given, but make sure you’re constantly testing a combination of formats including videos, images, and carousels. This helps avoid ad fatigue, optimises content for each platform, and feeds Meta’s algorithm more input. Creatives should also be optimised for mobile-first viewing, and edited for specific placements — for example, in-feed video ads should be square and videos on Reel/Stories should be 9:16.
Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns
Let’s dive deeper into Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns. These campaigns feature a very simplified structure with only one ad set, and requires almost no manual audience targeting.
You only need to feed Meta a few custom lists i.e. Add to Cart and Past Purchases, which it uses to find your most likely customers (similar to Lookalike audiences). In these campaigns, both new audiences and existing buyers are reached with the same creatives.
Why is this recommended?
If the marketing funnel is defunct, then seperate top of funnel (top of funnel), middle of funnel (MOF or retargeting) and BOF (bottom of funnel) campaigns might not be as effective as they once were.
This is why Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns are recommended by Meta, as they take a full funnel approach where everyone in a conversion mindset is consolidated and targeted at once.
Tips and tricks
There are a few things Meta suggests with ASC+ campaigns. Firstly, the more creatives the better (but obviously, smaller budgets can’t be stretched too thin).
Secondly, your ASC+ ads must appeal to both old and new customers at the same time, as they are all being targeted with the same creatives.
And finally, for larger budgets, dedicate some of your ad spend to an awareness campaign running alongside an ASC+ sales campaign. An awareness campaign will help long term brand growth via storytelling and soft sells to a traditional TOF or “cold” audience. The ASC+ campaign get you short term conversions via hard sells, which is why it’s recommended to focus all of your budget here for smaller ad spends.
Reel them in!
A final note on Reels; the “fastest growing placement” on Meta according to their insiders. Reels provide more opportunity for impressions, because on Instagram most people are spending majority of their time in-app watching them. Insights on Reels:
Consumer behaviour has shifted to audio ON, so make sure your audio is useful and engaging.
Keep it short form.
Make sure you keep text/branding in the safe zone.
Human presence is best (the less it looks like an ad the better).
Play around with trends.
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