I’m a big fan of audience segments because they add helpful details to ad reporting. Even when using algorithmic targeting, you can breakdown results by…

• Engaged Audience
• Existing Customers
• New Audience

But something went horribly wrong beginning around January 6th.

What Happened?

I was seeing a very high percentage spent on “Unknown” with very little on Engaged Audience and Existing Customers.

The existence of Unknown usually means a problem with your audience segments. Here’s how Meta defines it:

Your ad was delivered to some people while your existing customer segment was still empty.

But that’s not what was happening here. I don’t know how widespread this issue was, but others were running into this, too.

Is it Fixed?

Luckily, it finally appears to have been fixed during the day on January 14th (though it’s possibly not fixed for everyone). Unfortunately, Meta hasn’t fixed the broken data from the previous week or so, but it’s good to have this back.

Hopefully it’s fixed for good because audience segments are super useful. Did you have this issue too?

The post Were Your Audience Segments Broken? appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

There are new Beneficiary and Payer requirements. You may see an alert in Ads Manager with the following message:

Verification required for ads for Taiwan: Due to Taiwan regulations, verified beneficiary and payer information is required to run ads in Taiwan.

This applies if you explicitly target Taiwan, but also when running remarketing or other ads worldwide. If you can reach people in Taiwan, it applies.

How to Set Up

To set this, go to your Advertising Settings and click on Default Beneficiary and Payer. This allows you to define this account wide.

You may have already defined this for the European Union.

Now do it for Taiwan.

The Beneficiary is the person or organization that directly benefits from your ads.

The Payer is the person or organization paying for them.

These could be the same people or company. If the option isn’t there to select, you may need to go through a verification process.

The Ad Set

When you create an ad set that can reach people in Taiwan, the Beneficiary and Payer section will appear. There’s also a checkbox in the event that your ads promote Financial Products and Services.

This is just another requirement that’s unique to advertising in a specific region. Does it apply to you?

The post Beneficiary and Payer in Taiwan appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

Should you apply Topic Exclusions?

Ever since Meta’s announcements about content moderation changes, brands are looking into options. If you run ads, you might consider Topic Exclusions.

Where to Find It

This is found in the Brand Safety and Suitability section. Click on “Controls” on the left and then “Ad Account Settings” at the top. Next to Topic Exclusions, click “Change.”

Topic Exclusions will allow you to “Stop your Facebook in-stream video ads from appearing in on-demand videos about specific topics. These won’t apply to live videos.”

There are four options topics that you can exclude:

• Gaming
• News
• Politics
• Religion and Spirituality

Should You Use These?

If you’re worried about the videos your ads appear in, especially with the new moderation rules, you may want to consider these. At least Politics feels like a topic you might exclude.

Topic Exclusions are only available account-wide, so you can’t make this adjustment by ad set.

As always, these types of restrictions will limit where your ads can be shown, which can increase your costs. But if you or a client are concerned about Meta’s new environment, tools like Inventory Filters and Topic Exclusions could add a layer of protection to hopefully keep your ads out of the most problematic videos.

Is this something that you’ll use?

The post How to Use Topic Exclusions appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

With the latest controversy around Meta’s new content moderation policies, brands are looking at their options.

If you’re running ads, check out Inventory Filters.

Where Are They?

Access Inventory Filters by doing the following…

1. Go to Brand Safety and Suitability.

2. Click on “Controls” on the left.

3. Click “Ad Account Settings” at the top.

4. Next to Inventory Filter, click “Change.”

The first inventory filter you’ll see is for in-stream videos and Facebook Reels. There’s also one for Audience Network. Click to Edit.

What Are They?

The default setting is Moderate Inventory, which excludes highly sensitive content. You may instead want to use Limited Inventory, which “excludes additional sensitive content as well as all live videos.” That means that your ads won’t appear in videos that are considered “sensitive.”

These same settings are also available within the ad set under Placements. That way, you can control this account-wide or by ad set.

Should You Use Them?

Of course, when you limit your inventory, you can expect costs to go up. Will Inventory Filters help solve the expected problems that come with these new moderation changes? Time will tell.

But if you have a sensitive or high-profile client who is worried about these latest changes, this is something to try. Inventory Filters might at least keep your ads out of the most problematic videos.

Is this something you’ve experimented with?

The post Should You Use Inventory Filters? appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

Audience Segments are a powerful feature for all sales campaigns, but far too many advertisers don’t have these set up — or they aren’t set up properly.

Here’s what you need to do…

Define Your Audience Segments

Go to your Advertising Settings and click on Audience Segments.

There, you’ll see sections for both your Engaged Audience and Existing Customers.

First, define your Engaged Audience.

This should be the widest net of people who have engaged with you before. Start with a website custom audience of all of your website visitors during the past 180 days. You can also use custom audiences for lead forms, your customer list, your app, and more.

Then define your existing customers, who are people who have bought something from you before.

Use every custom audience that represents your paying customers. Start with a website custom audience for all purchase events during the past 180 days. If you can segment your email list to isolate paying customers, use that, too.

In both cases, there’s no reason to limit the definition more than you need to. Include your entire email list within your Engaged Audience, not just certain segments. Include all purchases, not just purchases that happened recently.

Considerations

A couple of points to remember:

1. If a person is included in both the Engaged Audience and Existing Customers, they are only counted as Existing Customers. There’s no need to exclude people.

2. Some custom audiences (Facebook Page, Instagram Account, and Video Engagement, for example) are unavailable for Audience Segments.

Reporting

Once this is set up, you can breakdown results for all sales campaigns by audience segments. This allows you to see performance and budget distribution between your engaged audience, existing customers, and new audience.

This is super valuable insight, and it’s information that has helped transform my approach to targeting.

Learn more about Audience Segments here.

The post How to Define Audience Segments appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

If you manage ads for others, make sure that you’re set up the right way.

Let’s discuss…

Partner

You and your client should have your own Business Portfolios (formerly Business Manager). The client should add you as a partner.

That client should then give you access to the following (where applicable):

• Facebook page
• Instagram account
• WhatsApp and Commerce accounts
• All active data sets, including the pixel
• Custom conversions
• Custom audiences that you may need to use
• Ad account (if possible)

Ideally, your client will share their ad account with you so that you’ll get history on campaigns run before. If that’s not possible, create a separate ad account for each client. Meta requires all clients to be managed separately.

Why?

You should only be added as a person if you’re an employee. Do not get added as an admin if you’re consulting for another business. This creates exposure for you, your client, and potentially your other clients that you do not need.

You don’t know what your client has done in the past. They may have violated rules. They may also violate rules with their page while you’re working with them. Getting added as a partner creates a buffer that should protect everyone involved.

Are you set up this way?

The post Have Advertising Clients Add You as a Partner appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

Check it out, Incremental Attribution…

We know that Meta has been testing this, and now we have our first examples of what it looks like. A big thank you to Robert-Anthony from my private community for sharing these screenshots.

Let’s take a look…

Example

If you’re part of this test, you’ll see “Attribution Type” within your Attribution Setting. By default, the Attribution Type is Rules-Based Attribution, which is what we use normally.

When you click to edit, you’ll see an option for “Incremental Attribution.”

When selected, Meta “will automatically optimize for conversions that are more incremental for ad sets where the performance goal is to maximize conversions.”

What Is It?

Meta previously described Incremental Attribution as conversions that would not have happened without seeing your ads.

Advertisers often complain about inflated results from view-through and even click-through that would have happened anyway. Incremental Attribution should help cut out that fluff. You may see fewer results, but they should be higher quality that the algorithm will learn from, in theory.

Are you part of the Incremental Attribution test?

The post Incremental Attribution Example appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

You may see this message in Ads Manager, especially if you run ads in Europe:

People’s ad settings may affect delivery. As people in the European Region make choices about their ad experience on our Products, you may see an impact…

Let’s discuss what this means…

Less-Personalized Ads

This is not new information, but it is an important reminder. Facebook and Instagram users in the European Union have two options:

1. Use the app for free with ads
2. Pay a subscription fee to remove ads

Meta initially offered these options thinking it would appease regulators. It did not. It was a very bad bet.

Not only did regulators require Meta to slash the price on the ad-free subscription TWICE, but Meta is also required to give users using the app for free one additional option: See less-personalized ads.

The Impact

The less-personalized ad experience relies on less data, “based only on context — what a person sees in a particular session on Facebook and Instagram — and a minimal set of data points including a person’s age, location, gender, and how a person engages with ads.”

Those who select the “less-personalized ads” experience will likely have a worse user experience. They won’t see fewer ads — only less relevant ones.

But this would also likely mean worse performance for advertisers. How much worse will depend upon the number of people who sign up for this.

If you run ads targeting people in the European Union, watch this closely.

The post Impact of Less-Personalized Ads in the European Union appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

When using the Website conversion location and maximizing the number or value of conversions…

…click “Show More Options”…

…to view and edit the attribution setting.

You may see this message:

1-day engaged-view is now selected by default to help maximize your campaign performance. With engaged-view, we’ll show your video ads to the people most likely to convert.

What it Means

Meta added engaged-view a year ago as an attribution setting option. When selected, Meta will prioritize people who will convert within a day after watching at least 10 seconds of your video — or 97% if it’s less than 10 seconds.

Until now, the default attribution setting was 7-day click and 1-day view (or 28-day click and 1-day view, way back in the day). But now 1-day engaged-view is selected by default.

Of course, engaged-view will only apply if you’re promoting a video. You can always turn it off, but I’m not sure why you would. It should only work to your benefit.

Evolving Meaning

Side Note: At some point during the past year, Meta changed the definition of Engaged-View. Originally, it was a view-through (“non-click” as Meta defined it) conversion.

You could only select it if 1-day view was selected.

But that’s no longer the case. The “non-click” wording was removed along with the requirement to select 1-day view.

Engaged-view now appears to be a segment of both click and view conversions. Meta provided this reporting example:

In other words, there were 20 total conversions — 15 which were 1-day view and 5 which were 1-day click. Of those conversions, 3 were 1-day engaged-view, which could have been the result of a view or click. Engaged-view is click agnostic.

The post Engaged-View is Now a Default appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

2024 was a year that transformed my understanding of Meta advertising. If you were lucky, this transformation started earlier.

But there was a crucial update that changed everything…

Audience Segments Changed Everything

Once Meta allowed us to breakdown all sales campaigns by audience segments, we were given new insight. But only if we wanted it.

I started testing everything:

• Advantage+ Audience with and without suggestions
• Original audiences using custom audiences with and without expansion
• Original audiences using detailed targeting and lookalike audiences
• Original audiences going broad

Because of audience segments, I quickly realized something important: Remarketing is prioritized whether you explicitly target remarketing audiences or not.

But there was more. Audience suggestions don’t seem to matter at all. If your audience can be expanded, which is in most cases now, the algorithm is going to do what it wants to do.

A New Perspective

Knowing this, I began looking at targeting in a whole new light. I realized that I needed to stop trying to control something that I can’t control. I realized that I needed to stop watering down my budget with multiple ad sets that likely reach many of the same people.

Once you embrace this, you can focus on what makes the biggest impact:

• Your ad copy and creative
• Your offer
• Your landing page

That was my lightbulb moment of 2024. What about you?

The post The Most Important Meta Advertising Lesson of 2024 appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

A whole lot changed in 2024 for Meta advertisers.

Here’s a recap…

Advantage+ Shopping Campaign Updates

There were several changes to Advantage+ Shopping campaigns:

1. The addition of conversion events other than a purchase.

2. The eligibility of Special Ad Categories.

3. The addition of the Engaged Customer (which became Engaged Audience) audience segment.

Manual Sales Campaign Updates

There were also several changes to manual Sales campaigns which originated with Advantage+ Shopping…

4. Account-wide Audience Controls allow control over four specific things, including age and location.

5. Addition of Audience Segments. This was a huge update to provide more transparency for advertising beyond Advantage+ Shopping.

6. Ability to schedule individual ads without needing to create separate ad sets for them.

AI Updates

Meta came out with several AI-generated creative updates…

7. Backgrounds.

8. Expanded images and videos.

9. Image animation.

10. Inspired variations.

And then…

11. AI-generated text suggestions.

Other Updates

12. The Learning phase was changed to 10 optimized events, but then it went back to 50 again. Maybe just a test?

13. Opportunity Score came and went — and apparently is back again for some advertisers.

14. Scale high-performing ad sets without re-entering the learning phase.

15. Advantage Detailed Targeting is now on by default for Link Clicks and Landing Page Views performance goals.

16. Dynamic Creative was replaced by Flexible Ad Format for some objectives.

17. Meta added the ability to feature Ad Sources, including Site Links and Offers.

18. First Conversion reporting helped cut out the fluff.

19. Quick Views for saving searches and filters in Ads Manager.

20. Detailed Targeting exclusions went away.

21. Automated rules templates go away, but then they resurfaced in Automatic Adjustments.

22. Unique conversion metrics were deprecated.

23. The ability to redeem promo codes was added to lead forms.

24. Location expansion was added to help reach potential travelers.

25. Financial Products and Services replaced the Credit special ad category.

26. Frequency Controls were added to manual campaigns using the Awareness and Engagement objectives.

27. A Facebook conversion location was added for Traffic campaigns.

What’s Next?

That’s a lot. So what’s in store for 2025?

The post Meta Ads Changes in 2024 appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

You can share Quick Views now…

A relatively new feature in Ads Manager is Quick Views. They allow you to save searches and filters and make them easily accessible.

Now you can make them available to your team.

How to Share

Once you select a Quick View, click the button next to Saved on the far right.

You’ll then see an option for “Share this view.”

Once you click it, you’ll see this…

Per Meta:

Share this quick view using the link below. You can only share it with people who have access to this ad account.

So you can copy this link and share it with members of your team. Assuming they have access to your ad account, they’ll be able to view and save the Quick View. If they don’t have access, the link won’t work.

Not all that complicated, but it can be helpful for making sure that people on your team see what you see.

The post Share Quick Views in Ads Manager appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

This doesn’t make sense…

I’m a huge fan of audience segments. It’s because of the breakdown by audience segments that I’ve changed my opinion about algorithmic targeting.

But there could be a problem.

What Happened

I started a campaign to promote one-on-ones only to people who visited my website during the past day. I don’t run remarketing campaigns often, but this was a little experiment. Original audiences, no expansion.

I used the Sales objective while optimizing for Daily Unique Reach. Not relevant here except that you can utilize audience segments with sales campaigns for additional insight.

When I broke down by audience segments, Meta says that 60% of my budget was spent on NEW audience.

How?

This shouldn’t be possible.

Why? One way I defined my Engaged Audience is with a website custom audience for all visitors during the past 180 days.

In other words, that audience would fully include the audience for visitors during the past day. There shouldn’t have been any impressions on the “new audience.”

Testing a Theory

I had a theory about what might be happening. I hadn’t used that 180 day custom audience for targeting for a few months. You can see this within the Audiences page. Ignore the top activity since that reflects the test I ended up running.

Is it possible that this matters? Did that custom audience stop updating, which meant that a 1-day audience could include new people?

There was one way to find out. I ran a test.

First I ran an ad set targeting the 180 day audience of website visitors for two days. Then I turned the ad set back on to target website visitors from the past day.

The result: This time, Meta said that 0% of my budget was spent on New Audience.

What Does It Mean??

Does this mean that the website custom audience used to define my audience segment stopped updating? I’ve long heard people suggest this, but nothing in Meta’s documentation says that this would happen.

Here’s an example:

Website custom audiences can expire, but that happens after two years of not using them. And when they expire, they’re deleted.

It shouldn’t need to be said, but the website custom audience used to define my Audience Segment had not expired.

There was once a similar quirk with lookalike audiences. As long as you were using them, they’d continue to update every three to seven days. But even that seems to have disappeared.

This Would Be a Problem

If website custom audiences actually stop updating when you stop using them, I’d love to see where in Meta’s documentation this is stated. And if it’s true, it’s a problem.

Meta can’t promote algorithmic targeting and the use of audience segments at the same time. That would mean encouraging advertisers to avoid targeting strategies like remarketing while knowing that this would then make audience segments — a tool that’s helpful to breakdown distribution of algorithmic targeting — potentially worthless.

If the website custom audiences used for Audience Segments do stop updating, advertisers need to know the details. Does updating stop immediately once the audience is no longer actively used for targeting? Is it after three months? Six months? Something else?

Regardless, this is nonsensical. Audience Segments need to update, regardless of whether the audiences are used for targeting. They need to be dynamic.

It’s possible that what I saw was a temporary glitch. Maybe it’s a bug that won’t happen again.

Or is it an oversight?

How You Can Help

If you have a similar setup like I do, I encourage you to test it:

1. You use an All Website Visitors 180 days custom audience or something like it to define your Engaged Audience.

2. You haven’t used it for targeting in in a few months (this can be verified on your Audiences page).

3. Create a campaign using the Sales objective.

4. Run an ad set using original audiences, targeting a 1-day website custom audience (turn off Advantage Custom Audience).

5. Use the Breakdown by Audience Segments.

What do you see?

The post Audience Segments Updating Problem appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

If you can, you should maximize value…

When using the Sales objective with Website conversion location where Purchase is the conversion event, the default performance goal is to maximize the number of conversions.

But if you’re eligible, you may want to consider a different approach.

Maximizing Number vs. Value

When maximizing the number of conversions, Meta only cares about one thing: Getting you as many conversions as possible within your budget.

That’s not necessarily a bad thing. But a better option may be to maximize value. Meta will be focused on higher value purchases and Return on Ad Spend.

Meta recommends this, but not everyone qualifies.

Eligibility Requirements

First, you need to track purchase events with at least two distinct values during the past seven days. If you only have one price point, maximize value won’t help you.

The more difficult threshold is that you also need to have generated at least 30 attributed optimized click-through purchases with values over 7 days. It’s not only that you’ve had 30 conversions on your pixel during the past week. They need to be attributed and click through.

Should You Use It?

If you can, maximizing value is often worth it. Especially if you’re not getting the ROAS that you want and you qualify for this approach. Just know that your Cost Per Conversion may go up as you’ll likely get a lower volume of conversions.

Maximizing volume also gives you the option of using the ROAS Goal bid strategy.

The post Maximize Value Eligibility appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

I’ve been in the Facebook ads space for a very long time. You might even say I was one of the original Facebook ads guys back in the day.

But if there’s anything I know for sure it’s that very little about this stuff is definitive. When people speak in black and white terms about Meta advertising, I tune out.

Is it Documented?

Unless Meta says something in their official documentation, it’s pure speculation. It might be educated speculation. It might appear to be true based on your experience.

But it’s not universally true.

Universal Strategies

Your strategy works for you? Great. That doesn’t mean it will work for me.

I make it my business to know every boring detail possible about Meta ads. Because of that, I still speak in uncertain terms.

I recommend this, but do what works for you. I wouldn’t do that, but let results be your guide.

Some people don’t like that. They want clarity. And those same people fall for Meta ads snake oil.

Don’t let that be you.

The post Meta Ads Uncertainty is Certain appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

Optimizing Meta ad creative is a huge pain. Meta asks for three sizes, and even those dimensions aren’t what they always recommend.

Recently, I shared a grid of all of Meta’s recommended aspect ratios by placement and media type, and how they often conflict with those three initial groups.

But, that doesn’t seem to always work, and you could spend a ton of time creating multiple versions and customizing by individual placements.

There’s another option…

One Creative for All Placements

You could provide one creative that works for every placement. Hat tip to Tom Boxall in my private community for sharing this idea.

You can create one 9:16 image or video, but maintain a square safe zone in the middle. To accomplish this, I’ve created a safe zone template that I use when editing.

In the example above, I’ve created a second layer for the safe zone template (which is orange). The middle “safe zone” is transparent and square, minus a carveout on the right side for buttons in Reels. You’d then hide the template before exporting.

When you upload this creative, leave the 9:16 version as is. Select 1:1 for the first version and drag the image to center it, if necessary. You can customize the third option if you want, but that will be for limited placements anyway. I’ve found if you leave it at “original,” it will use square for the right hand column.

Then use the advanced preview to confirm, and you should see that the square safe zone is fully in view for every placement. Even the “square” placements are expanded to 4:5 where possible.

Use My Template

This approach is much less effort and requires fewer resources than creating three or four different sizes and customizing by multiple placements. But it does take some planning. The key is to create images or videos that will look good in all sizes, and you’ll need to maintain a square safe zone.

You can use the safe zone template that I created and try it out with your editing, too. I’ve created two versions: Black with a white outline and white with a black outline. You may need to use a different version based on the background color of your image.

These are 675×1200, but you can resize to fit your needs as long as it remains 9:16.

[DOWNLOAD White Safe Zone Template]

[DOWNLOAD Black Safe Zone Template]

The post Safe Zone Template for All Meta Ads Placements appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

What’s going on with health and wellness??

People are freaking out about restrictions coming for advertisers in the health and wellness industry. It does sound potentially bad.

Let’s attempt to sort fact from fiction (or at least speculation)…

The Sources

There’s a ton of speculation and not a lot of confirmed facts from official Meta sources. So I wanted to put together the main points of what I think we know at this point.

Here’s a quote that was shared in my private community from an ads rep:

Of course, reps have been known to be misinformed before (often, actually). We should take their word seriously, but not as gospel.

Plenty of agencies are hearing similar stories from their reps. This LinkedIn post from Haus shares a similar timeline.

And finally, there are a few official help pages that give us a glimpse of all of this (just not the detail that others are sharing).

• About data source categories in Meta Events Manager
• Understand data sharing restrictions based on data source categories

Making Sense Of It

Now let’s summarize what I think we know at this point…

Enforcement of new restrictions for certain health and wellness brands begins in January. This is for data sources associated with the following:

• Medical conditions
• Health statuses
• Provider and patient relationships

If you pass these types of data via the pixel or API, this applies to you.

I’ve seen a lot of speculation that restrictions are for a much broader group of companies, but I haven’t seen that verified officially. It makes far more sense to apply restrictions for data sources when dealing with sensitive health data.

The scope of Meta’s restrictions will be variable depending on the situation, including:

• Core Setup
• Restrictions on using certain standard and custom events
• Full restrictions on event tracking

Some health and wellness brands may face significant limitations on data sharing. They may even be prevented from tracking lower funnel conversion events.

How to Prepare

This all sounds scary, but it’s still unclear. Prepare the best that you can, but I suspect that this isn’t going to be applied as broadly as many expect.

So stay on top of those alerts that come from Meta and check to see if you’ve been assigned a data source category in Events Manager (found under the Settings tab).

If you see anything here, it will be the first sign that you may face restrictions.

The post Health and Wellness Restrictions Coming in 2025 appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

Have CPMs gone up this holiday season?

Meta advertisers often see CPM costs increase during the holidays. This is especially true during the week of Black Friday and Cyber Monday when competition is at its highest.

But while that increase was significant and automatic in years past, it hasn’t always happened in recent years. What about 2024?

The Results

I use a resource called the Within Marketing Pulse to check this. They provide data based on advertising by their clients, which generate $5 Billion in ecommerce revenue.

One of their charts shows that both Facebook and Instagram CPM went up beginning with the final week of November.

• Instagram CPM up 65% year over year on December 1st
• Facebook CPM up 38% year over year on December 2nd

These increases are partly because the holiday falls on different days than a year ago, but not entirely.

Another chart shows the average CPM increased from $7 on November 8th to about $15 on December 3rd.

While these increases aren’t what we saw years ago when CPM would triple or even quadruple, these costs are clearly up.

Getting Results

Of course, an increased CPM doesn’t mean you can’t get good results. The reason that cost is increasing is because there are more advertisers spending more money during that time. But these brands are willing to pay more because consumers are looking to spend.

It’s an opportunity. If you do it right, ad performance typically outweighs that increased cost.

Have you seen costs go up?

The post Are Holiday CPMs Back Up? appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

I recently published a video about click attribution. In it, I explained how I’ve long believed that click attribution requires a click on an outbound link to report a conversion. Otherwise it would be a view-through conversion.

But Meta’s documentation is ambiguous at best, so I created a test to prove it one way or the other. Here’s what I did…

My Test

I created an Engagement campaign with the following conversion location settings in the ad set:

• Conversion Location: On Your Ad
• Engagement Type: Post Engagement
• Performance Goal: Maximize Daily Unique Reach

I used an ad that didn’t provide an outbound link to click on, only a static image with instructions.

The image asked people to do the following:

1. Click the image.
2. Open a separate browser window and go to a specific URL.
3. Click a button that was on that page.

When the button on my website was clicked, it fired a custom event called ‘experiment’ that was unique to this test (it doesn’t fire anywhere else).

The Results

If click attribution requires an outbound click, Meta would count these as view-through conversions. Instead, every reported conversion (33 of them in all) was from click attribution.

This proves that click attribution can result from any click prior to a conversion. That’s bad when it comes to reporting since it’s one more black hole that can’t be captured using UTMs and referral traffic.

Make sure to read my blog post about this test and what it says about click attribution.

The post My Click Attribution Test appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

In this video, I share an example of a Meta ads campaign with a 27x Return On Ad Spend (ROAS).

This is real, but it requires a ton of context.

Let’s discuss…

The Campaign

I’m running an awareness campaign optimized for reach…

The reason I’m optimizing for reach is because my goal is to reach as many people as possible within a small and relevant audience. I’m targeting a few thousand people on my email list.

There are five different ad sets in this campaign, one for different segments of people on my list.

Each ad is worded slightly differently to be consistent with an email that they would have received from me.

Advantage Campaign Budget is on to distribute a modest $25 daily budget optimally between the five ad sets.

Results

At the time of recording this, I had spent a total of about $220 to generate seven purchases.

The ad promotes a $976 product, so each sale drives up that ROAS. All but one of the reported purchases in Ads Manager are for that product.

Here’s how the conversions break down by attribution setting:

• 1 day view (4)
• 7 day click (3)

Making Sense of the Results

The huge ROAS is due partially to the high price tag on the product. Since I’m only spending $25 per day, every purchase significantly drives up those results.

But most importantly, this is remarketing. I’m targeting the same people who are receiving emails about this product.

The value of view-through conversions is hotly debated among advertisers. In many cases, you can make the case that they contributed to the purchase. If you’re reaching a new audience, they may have later Googled you to find and purchase your product.

Remarketing is different. It certainly is possible that the four view-through conversions were the result of someone who saw the ads and then later converted. But it’s just as likely that these people didn’t even notice the ads that were shown to them. I merely reached these people on the day they received my email and they converted. Those view-through conversions may have happened anyway without my ad.

The click conversions certainly have more value, but even in this case they can be scrutinized. While they clicked and purchased, they also may have eventually converted from my emails. The ad was simply one of the ways that I was reaching them.

What’s the Point?

I still find this campaign valuable because it makes my emails more effective, especially for a high priced product. I wouldn’t do this for a low-ticket product. Even if my ads were the reason that one person converts who wouldn’t have otherwise, it’s valuable. It’s just not 27x ROAS valuable.

Context is important.

Just remember these factors when advertisers brag about ridiculous results from remarketing like this. It’s real and not at the same time.

If you can, ask for the context.

The post Return on Ad Spend from Remarketing appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

There’s an update to Traffic campaigns that will allow you to send people to your Facebook page.

Let’s discuss…

Conversion Location

Reminder: This is for the Traffic campaign objective only.

Within the ad set, you may see a new Conversion Location for “Instagram or Facebook.” This allows you to “send traffic to an Instagram profile, Facebook Page or both.”

If you don’t have this update, you’ll only have Instagram. This is how you would normally set a performance goal to maximize Instagram profile visits. But now you can send people to your Facebook page, too.

After choosing your identity, select your destinations. You’ll be presented with checkboxes so that you’ll be able to send people to your Instagram profile, your Facebook page, or both.

Ad Creation

When you create your ad, there will be two CTA buttons, one for Instagram and one for Facebook. You can’t customize these.

If you go to the advanced previews, you’ll see that the CTA button and destination used will depend on the placement. Facebook placements will send people to your page, and Instagram placements will send people to your profile.

It’s weird that the domain for the Facebook version says “Instagram.com,” but I created the different images for each version to highlight where each version goes. So it’s definitely going to Facebook, and it must be a display bug.

When Would You Use This?

You might use this if you don’t have a website to send people to. This is certainly more of a top-of-funnel action, and you should optimize for conversions when possible. But sometimes you have limited options.

The post Facebook Conversion Location for Traffic Campaigns appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

Am I overthinking this?

Someone asked me a question about click attribution recently, and after going down the rabbit hole of Meta’s official documentation, I can’t answer it with 100% certainty.

Let’s discuss…

The Question

As you know, Meta utilizes click and view attribution, so conversions are reported by default that happen within 7 days of clicking or 1 day of viewing your ad.

But does that click need to be on a link to your website?

Reflexively, I said yes. That seems rather obvious. But then I checked Meta’s documentation for validation and I can’t find anything conclusive.

Meta’s Documentation on Attribution

Here’s Meta’s short definition of click attribution:

Click-through attribution: A person clicked your ad and took an action.

Of course, it’s technically called “click-through attribution,” so that should mean… through to your website, right??

Still, I needed that spelled out clearly. It has to say it somewhere. But, I’ve gone through page after page of Meta’s documentation, and there’s no mention of clicking through to your website.

What it Could Mean

It feels implied, but it’s ambiguous. Meta doesn’t say that it ONLY includes clicks on links to your website. It doesn’t list out the types of clicks that count. And it doesn’t say that it includes all types of clicks.

If we’re to be literal based on this information, it could mean clicking a video to view it without clicking the CTA button to your website. If that person converted within the attribution setting, that would be considered a click-through conversion.

Until now, I would have considered that a view-through conversion, assuming they converted within a day. If it’s not, that breaks my brain a bit.

I’m not willing to change my interpretation at this point, but it would be helpful if Meta provided clarifying language.

What do you think?

The post Does Click Attribution Require an Outbound Click? appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

There’s a new Advantage+ Creative enhancement called Enhance CTA. Here’s how it works…

What Is It?

When viewing your Advantage+ Creative enhancements, you may a new option for Enhance CTA.

Here’s how Meta describes it:

We’ll pair key phrases with your CTA in overlays on Stories to share information about your offerings and encourage action.

There is an option to customize this enhancement, though it seems to be buggy for me. When you click “Customization,” here’s what I see…

It will give you the option to “Use AI to identify promotional phrases.” Under that option, I’m seeing the message that Meta couldn’t identify phrases in my text options. I even loaded it with promotional phrases, and it didn’t find anything.

My guess is that if Meta’s AI is able to identify promotional phrases, it will list them here. And since this is how you’d customize this enhancement, you’d be able to remove the ones that you don’t like.

How These Enhancements Work

This is for Stories placements only and it will generate a CTA overlay for you. Like all Advantage+ Creative enhancements, Enhance CTA will only be applied in some situations where Meta thinks it can improve performance.

If you don’t want it, of course, you’ll need to actively turn it off.

The post What is Enhance CTA? appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

A while back, I discussed how using 4:5 instead of 1:1 was more effective for some placements.

Well, Meta actually recommends it now. Let’s discuss…

Creative Upload Process

When you upload your ad creative, Meta recommends three aspect ratios:

• 1:1
• 9:16
• 1.91:1

Meta applies these aspect ratios to different placement groups. But this process desperately needs to be updated because these groups conflict with many of Meta’s own recommendations.

Meta’s Recommendations

An example is the Facebook Feed placement. In the Best Practices for Aspect Ratios, Meta says:

Vertical 4:5 is recommended for single-image ads to be delivered to the ad placement Facebook Feed.

There’s also a helpful grid that provides the accepted and recommended aspect ratios.

Meta recommends 4:5 for the following placements:

• Facebook Feed
• Instagram Feed
• Facebook Video Feeds
• Instagram Explore Home
• Facebook In-Stream Videos

In most cases, this is for both images and videos.

The Process Needs Updating

It doesn’t mean that the square creative won’t work, but 4:5 will take up more real estate. That should help performance.

Of course, this highlights how much of a mess the current process is for uploading different aspect ratios for different placement groups. To remain consistent with what Meta actually recommends, you’ll need to individually customize placements. That defeats the purpose of the placement groups.

Side note: Many advertisers have been using 1:1 for the Right Hand Column placement for a while now, despite Meta putting it into the group that suggests 1.91:1. Well, the grid clarifies that Meta actually recommends 1:1 for that placement.

The post Meta Recommends 4:5 Aspect Ratio appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

Meta announced some important changes for users in the EU, following continued pressure from regulators. Changes include lowering the cost of the ad-free subscription to launching “Less Personalized Ads.”

Let’s discuss…

Meta’s Announcement

Here’s what Meta said about “less personalized ads”:

Over the coming weeks, people in the EU who choose to use Facebook and Instagram for free with ads will be able to choose to see ‘less personalized ads.’ This less personalized ads option relies on less data…

Meta says that these ads will be based on a “minimal set of data points including a person’s age, location, gender, and how a person engages with ads.”

Meta says that if users choose to see less personalized ads, “it may result in ads that are less relevant to a person’s interests. That means people will see ads that they don’t find as interesting.”

Meta’s Bad Bet

Meta originally created the ad-free subscription model for users in the EU because the company believed it would satisfy regulators. This, Meta believed, would give users two options:

1. Use Facebook and Instagram with ads powered by their data
2. Pay to remove ads and their data won’t be used for advertising

But the regulators weren’t buying it. Now Meta has been forced to slash the price of the subscription (twice) while now offering this “less personalized ads” option. It would appear that Meta made the decision on the subscription prematurely, and now they’re paying for it.

Impact to Advertisers

Understand that the impact to advertisers isn’t about removing targeting inputs. I’ve seen reactions that this isn’t a big deal because advertisers have success going broad and using limited inputs anyway. But, this impacts the data points that META can use to deliver ads.

Advertisers should watch this closely. How many users will sign up for less personalized ads? I’ve seen reports that Meta is not hiding this option — users are getting prompted to make a choice. How will it impact performance?

Now that it’s happened in the EU, it sets a precedent. We could see this implemented elsewhere as well. And that could be bad.

The post Less Personalized Ads in the EU appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

Are ads coming to Threads in January? That’s the word according to an article from TheInformation.com.

You’ve probably seen the headline: “Meta to launch ads on Threads in early 2025”

Since the article itself is behind a paywall, it’s the headline itself that has spread across social media. But it’s misleading.

What the Article Says

The article itself says the following:

Meta Platforms plans to introduce advertisements to its text app, Threads, early next year, hoping to cash in on the app’s rapid growth, according to three people with direct knowledge of the company’s plans.

And then some much needed details (emphasis is mine)…

A team inside Instagram’s advertising division is leading the effort, which is still in the early stages, the people said. Threads is planning to kick off the effort by letting a small number of advertisers create and publish ads on the app starting in January, one of those people said.

Letting a small number of advertisers run ads sounds a whole lot like a test, not a launch. So the TEST begins in January, but there’s no indication when the new placement will actually LAUNCH to all advertisers.

Advertisers know that ads are coming to Threads eventually. It’s just a matter of when. But a January expectation feels premature.

What Meta Has Said

Meta just said this on the Q3 earnings call:

Specifically, as it pertains to monetization, we don’t expect Threads to be a meaningful driver of 2025 revenue at this time.

If Meta were making immediate plans to launch ads on Threads, the Q3 earnings call would be the precise audience that would want to hear about it. But that quote doesn’t sound like a company that’s ready to launch ads in January.

This is consistent with my theory that the story itself from TheInformation.com could be accurate while the headline itself is misleading. A test could be starting soon, which wouldn’t be unexpected. But advertisers know that tests can last months, if not longer, before a feature becomes official.

Mark Zuckerberg once mentioned getting “on a path to 1 Billion people” before monetizing.

Yes, that’s vague. Threads doesn’t technically need to reach 1 Billion users before ads arrive. But the most recent count is 275 Million. Is that “on a path” to 1 Billion?

My Theory

Rumors about ads coming to Threads aren’t new. I’ve covered these here and here and here. Eventually, it’s going to happen.

The story itself would be more interesting if there were an updated timeline on when ads would be fully launched to Threads, but that didn’t happen. Instead, any projections based on a January test would be pure speculation.

My guess is that testing is starting soon, but the full rollout will be a while. Meta’s statement on the Q3 earnings call leaves the door open for tests and a potential launch in late 2025, but my guess is that they didn’t have the confidence to make that statement.

So, sure. We may see ads in 2025. But when? We’ll see.

The post Are Ads Coming to Threads in Early 2025? appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

It’s finally here. Now you can control frequency of Engagement campaigns.

My last video was about changes to Frequency Control for Awareness campaigns. It was during the process of putting together those notes that I realized something big: This is coming to Engagement campaigns, too!

Here’s what you need to know…

How to Find It

Use the following steps to access Frequency Controls for Engagement campaigns.

1. Select the Engagement objective.

2. Within the Conversion Location section, select “On Your Ad.”

3. For Engagement Type, select “Video Views.”

4. For Performance Goal, Select “Maximize ThruPlay views.”

If you have this option, you’ll see a new section for Frequency Control. Check the box to set a frequency for your ad delivery.

What is Frequency Control?

You’ll have options to set a Frequency Cap or Target Frequency.

Frequency Cap has been around for years when optimizing for reach. It sets a cap on the number of times you reach people during a specified number of days. Target Frequency is also rolling out for Reach optimization.

This is the first time we’ve seen frequency controls for the Engagement objective when using the Auction buying type (at least beyond a limited test). It would’ve been nice to have years ago, but here we are.

Target Frequency establishes the goal average number of times that you want to reach people — so it could be more or less, depending on the person.

Requirements

Target Frequency requires the following settings:

1. Lifetime budget
2. Schedule that runs for at least 7 days
3. No use of bid strategies

If any of these requirements is not met, Target Frequency is grayed out.

You’d still be able to utilize Frequency Cap.

Should You Use It?

If you run engagement campaigns, this could be a useful option for controlling frequency. I wouldn’t obsess over what is a “good” or “bad” frequency. Instead, test it out and see how it impacts your results.

It is a way to restrict the algorithm. While advertisers love that, it’s usually going to lead to worse results. But you may have a specific reason for wanting to limit how often you reach people. This gives you an option.

Now… What about other objectives and performance goals?

The post Frequency Controls for Engagement Campaigns appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

Meta is providing a new way to manage frequency when running Awareness campaigns.

Let’s discuss…

Frequency Control

This update applies to when you use the following settings…

1. Auction Buying Type.

2. Awareness Campaign Objective.

3. Performance Goal: Maximize reach of ads.

If you have this update, you will see a new section for Frequency Control with an option for Target Frequency:

Target frequency helps you set how often people see your ads each week and can help you reach your intended audience at the frequency you’ve set.

Target Frequency

If you’ve ever used the Reach and Frequency or Reservation buying type, you’e seen this before. It’s been around for more than a year (I wrote about it last October), but now it’s coming to Awareness campaigns using the Auction buying type.

Up until now, you’ve only had the option of a Frequency Cap, which has been around since at least 2016 (I wrote about it then!). This set a maximum number of times you want to reach people. This option remains available.

Target Frequency allows you to set an average number of times you’ll reach people, so you can still go over that number for some people.

Restrictions

Note that Target Frequency is only available when using lifetime budgets for campaigns that are 7 days or longer.

You also can’t use this with bid controls.

These restrictions do not exist for Frequency Cap.

This change is rolling out so you may not have it yet.

NOTE: Frequency Control is also coming to Engagement campaigns when the performance goal is ThruPlay. I have a separate video coming on that.

The post Target Frequency Added to Awareness Campaigns appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

Some advertisers are seeing a new feature in Ads Manager called Flexible Media, not to be confused with Flexible Ad Format.

What is it? How does it work?

Let’s discuss…

Where You’ll Find It

When uploading a single image or video, you may see a checkbox with the following message:

Enable flexible media to deliver the media you select below to additional placements when it’s likely to improve performance.

You may also see it during ad creation under your uploaded media.

If you hover over it you can either turn it on or off.

How Does it Work?

I haven’t been able to find any official documentation on this, but my interpretation of Flexible Media is this…

You can provide different creative for each of the three placement groups (1:1, 9:16, and 1.91:1).

An example might be that you provided a 1.91:1 image for the right hand column and other placements in its group. If Meta believes you can get better results with square, it will test that as well.

From what I can tell, this is available for all objectives when using the website conversion location and a single image or video. Since I haven’t found official documentation, it’s possible this is just a test.

Do you have it?

The post What is Flexible Media? appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

It’s official, unique conversion events are discontinued.

Effective October 30th, Meta deprecated unique conversion metrics from the Ads Insights API.

What it Means

We’ve known about this since August. When I wrote about it then, I assumed we’d see this impact the conversion events columns in Ads Manager. And now this is confirmed.

Previously, when you added columns in Ads Manager, there were the following checkboxes for standard events:

• Total
• Unique
• Value
• Cost
• Unique Cost

Here’s an example…

But now you’ll only find three:

• Total
• Value
• Cost

It likely looks like this for you, too…

Replacements?

I don’t know how often advertisers used these anyway, and I didn’t find they worked consistently.

An obvious replacement is First Conversion reporting, which may be why unique metrics were deprecated in the first place. When you compare attribution settings, you have the option to view only the first conversion reported (by default it’s All Conversions).

While this isn’t exactly the same as unique conversions, the difference is minimal. First Conversion cuts out the extra events, which often solves problems when you feel reporting is inflated.

The post Unique Conversion Metrics Removed from Ads Manager appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

This is something I’ve speculated for a while now. Do audience suggestions actually do anything?

I’ve now had two very clear examples of this…

Example #1

One example was a test I ran several months back of using Advantage+ Audience with and without suggestions. When I used them, I provided custom audiences that matched my audience segments.

When I compared results, I actually reached those audience segments more when not providing any suggestions at all.

Example #2

And now we have a new example, this time related to age range…

I recommend using Advantage+ Audience when optimizing for conversions, but especially purchases. If you optimize for leads, you need to monitor it closely to watch for problems. Well, I ran into such a problem recently.

When using Advantage+ Audience, you have the option of providing audience suggestions.

When running an ad set optimized for leads that didn’t utilize suggestions, I found using a breakdown by age that Meta spent 70% of my budget on people over 55.

I’m fine spending money on all age brackets, but I was finding these were low quality leads.

Since I wasn’t using audience suggestions, I decided to try again with a suggested age range of 25 to 44.

Keep in mind that you can’t set an audience control for maximum age when using Advantage+ Audience. As a result, Meta can still deliver beyond that range.

Well, that suggestion did virtually nothing. Meta still spent more than 78% of my budget on people outside of the suggested age range.

Why This Happens

In theory, it makes sense why this happens. Meta’s focus is on getting you as many of your goal action as possible within your budget. Audience controls can restrict the algorithm’s ability to do that. While that makes sense when talking about expanding an audience beyond a lookalike audience or detailed targeting, it can be problematic here.

I’ve talked before about how Meta needs to fix this with Advantage+ Audience. There are times when age or gender need to be an audience control or it becomes unusable.

One final point. I wouldn’t use this as a reason to avoid Advantage+ Audience when optimizing for leads in all cases. I even ran a split test a few months ago that showed Advantage+ Audience without suggestions generated more total and high quality leads than detailed targeting and lookalikes. It’s something you need to monitor.

What do you think?

The post Does Meta Ignore Audience Suggestions? appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

Meta had their 2024 Q3 earnings call last week and discussed several topics that impact advertisers.

Here are my primary takeaways…

4 Takeaways

1. Ad revenue is up 18.5 percent compared to the third quarter last year.

This is driven primarily by $17 Billion in ad revenue in the US and Canada.

Meta continues to profit from advertising, which means that advertisers continue to spend money. Ad growth is not slowing.

What are advertisers seeing?

2. For the fourth consecutive quarter, the average price per ad is up year over year.

Ad prices were up 11 percent compared to the third quarter a year ago.

There was a time when the average price per ad was dropping quarter after quarter, likely driven by an increase in impressions from video and Reels.

Many factors will impact costs, but this is now a trend.

3. This is while ad impression growth continues to slow, rising only 7 percent compared to a year ago.

Ad costs are outpacing impression growth.

It’s important to note that ad impressions aren’t dropping. Instead, the rate at which impressions increase year over year is slowing. This can be at least partially attributed to the fact that the environment that led to an increase in impressions and drop in ad costs a year ago (mainly driven by video) is no longer new.

4. Threads is up to 275 Million monthly users with 1 million new users added every day.

Even so, Meta doesn’t expect Threads to be a meaningful driver of revenue in 2025.

That appears to be cold water on the rumors that ads were on the way to the app. All along, Mark Zuckerberg has maintained a 1 Billion user milestone for monetization.

Not necessarily great news for advertisers since the added placement will surely increase inventory and lower costs.

The post Meta 2024 Q3 Earnings Takeaways appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

Do you use Daily Unique Reach?

Daily Unique Reach is one of the oldest optimization options and it’s available under most campaign objectives. It was actually one of my favorite ways to optimize like eight to ten years ago. I’d use this when targeting super small and relevant remarketing audiences.

I revisited it recently, and some weird things happened…

What Is It?

Daily Unique Reach will aim to show your ad to people no more than once per day.

It was a good way to control frequency before Reach optimization with frequency capping was available.

My Experience

I hadn’t used this for years, so I decided to give it a spin for a test recently. I don’t know if this was a bug or just the way Daily Unique Reach works now, but it’s super erratic.

One day, I’ll barely get any delivery at all. The next I’ll spend my entire budget in an hour. It’s just all over the place, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like it.

Note that this is an audience size of 50,000 after audience filtering. There should be no issue finding people to deliver the ads to, so this is more of a delivery quirk.

I doubt many people are using this, but is this normal for Daily Unique Reach these days?

The post Daily Unique Reach Delivery appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

What is your ad limit? Every Facebook page has a limit of the number of ads it can run at once based on ad spend.

Let’s find yours…

What They Are

There are four tiers…

1. Under $100k for highest spending month: 250
2. Under $1 Million: 1,000
3. Under $10 Million: 5,000
4. Over $10 Million: 20,000

Note that this limit is per page, not ad account. So if a single page is controlled by multiple ad accounts, all ads count toward the limit.

Find Yours

Ad Limits Per Page is found within the All Tools Menu under the Advertise group.

There you’ll get a list of the pages you manage and progress toward your limit.

Is it Necessary?

Meta first implemented ad limits per page in 2019 because advertisers were hurting performance by running too many ads at once. And that’s a very real risk.

Honestly, these limits seem unreachable. Running 250 ads while spending under $100,000 per month is overkill. You’d need to be using all kinds of automated systems for this to provide any advantage, and even then I’d be skeptical.

It makes sense to have a limit, but it feels as though these need to be updated. Especially because of the many changes since 2019 related to audience expansion and algorithmic targeting, there is less utility for the number of ad sets (and resultant ads) that we once used.

Keep it simple, kids.

The post Ad Limits Per Page appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

This grid will help…

Almost every advertiser gets this wrong, so I wanted to create a reference that would make it easier.

Respected vs. Expanded Confusion

The most common point of confusion is about when your targeting inputs are respected and when they’re not.

In other words, there are times when your inputs are used as tight constraints. Meta will respect those inputs. And there are other times when your targeting inputs are only seen as suggestions or the audience is expanded.

Far too often, advertisers switch from Advantage+ Audience because they think they have more control with original audiences. That’s often not the case.

The Grid

I created this grid as an easy reference. It looks at the following targeting inputs:

• Minimum age
• Maximum age
• Gender
• Location
• Custom audiences
• Custom audience exclusions
• Lookalike audiences
• Language
• Detailed targeting

It then highlights whether each of those inputs is respected, a suggestion, or expanded depending on your setup.

I include every scenario based on performance goal for Advantage+ Audience or original audiences. While all performance goals are treated the same for Advantage+ Audience, there are three different scenarios when using original audiences.

Check out my blog post for more details about these differences. Bookmark it!

The post Targeting Inputs Grid: Respected or Expanded? appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

Oh hey, what’s this?

Luckily I took some screenshots when I saw this in Events Manager because it disappeared for me soon after. You may now have the option to view value and currency metrics.

Let’s take a look…

What is it?

If you have this update, you may see the following alert.

“You can switch the view to track the quality of data you’re sending with value and currency parameters.”

On the left, there’s a dropdown menu for columns and filtering by different table types. This is normally where you’d see the “Add Events” dropdown, but that is moved to the right.

Within this new dropdown menu, the default selection is Event Usage Metrics, which is what we normally see now. The new option is Value and Currency Metrics.

This will provide an overview of your value-based metrics with columns for the following:

• Value Coverage
• Valid Value
• Currency Coverage
• Valid Currency

Is it Useful?

Since I lost access to this, I can’t say a lot about what to expect here or the value this adds. As far as I can tell, everything was just fine with my currency and value metrics, which were all showing 100% (whatever that means!).

Do you have this update?

The post Value and Currency Metrics in Events Manager appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

Black Friday is about a month away (I KNOW!), and you need to be ready. Prepare your offer now.

Here’s what to do…

The Offer

The most successful ads during this time will highlight an irresistible offer. That doesn’t mean 10% off or free shipping. These kinds of “offers” won’t cut it. People will be on the hunt for deals.

That doesn’t mean that your offer needs to be a discount. It could be something new and different and exciting that you’ve never done before. That’s what I’m planning (stay tuned!).

What you can’t do, in most cases, is keep running what you’ve done all year. Your ads will fade into the background.

Your Launch Strategy

Start planning what that offer will be. Plan a launch strategy, which could involve building interest and anticipation a week or more in advance.

You may even choose to promote your offer a week or two before Black Friday. I’ve done this in the past and it helps avoid the noise. I had a Pre-Black Friday Week Sale, and it worked well.

If you have a multi-pronged strategy that includes email, this early approach can be even more effective. Otherwise, if you wait until Black Friday, your emails and ads may get buried with all of the other offers.

Get ahead of it. What are your plans?

The post Start Planning Your Black Friday Offer Now appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

You can no longer build an agency around your targeting strategies. You can have unique approaches to targeting, but it can’t be the primary way to differentiate yourself.

The value you add with targeting will only decrease, so focus on advertising services that will continue to make an impact.

Start with these three areas…

Where to Focus

1. Prioritize everything associated with conversion attribution.

That includes, but is not limited to…

• The setup of the pixel
• Creation and management of conversion events
• The setup and management of web API
• Passing offline events
• Applying UTM parameters for third-party reporting

Work on strategies that help you provide your clients a full picture of advertising impact. Build an expertise in making sense of the data.

2. Copy and creative.

This may be the most obvious because it’s where you’ll spent most of your time with advertising now, and in the future. Employ copywriters and designers to provide an edge. Focus on creative testing, persuasive offers, and launch strategies.

3. Focus on where you’re sending people.

This is often neglected. A poorly performing website will impact the results that you can generate, so take over this area when you can. Focus on developing high-performing landing pages that load quickly and are designed for optimal user experience. You can also include landing page testing.

Find Your Niche

You don’t need to do all of these things, but they are services that can help set you apart. There’s plenty that you can prioritize over targeting.

Start pivoting now.

The post How Your Agency Will Succeed in 2025 appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

If you run an ad agency, it’s time to start your pivot.

As we head toward 2025, reassess your value proposition. If the primary way you differentiate yourself is through targeting services, you’re on borrowed time.

We can have the philosophical discussion about the need for complicated targeting strategies on another day. This isn’t meant to start an argument about how effective your strategies are.

Here’s what I mean…

The Trend

What can’t be disputed is that the trend is toward more algorithmic targeting and less control. No matter what weaknesses exist with algorithmic targeting now, it will get better.

You need to prepare for that.

Even if you’re able to prove value with your targeting strategies now, it’s unlikely to last. And eventually, you may not even be able to use these approaches anymore.

Then what?

Your Pivot

Start pivoting now before it’s too late. Differentiate yourself by highlighting services that will be relevant and valued for years to come.

It doesn’t mean that you can’t continue to use targeting strategies that you believe are effective. Instead, you should stop focusing on what you can do with targeting as why someone should hire you. You should build and highlight other expertise that will help your agency persist through changes.

We’ll talk about what to do instead in my next video.

The post Pivot Away from Targeting Strategies in 2025 appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

We all know by now that remarketing happens naturally when using Advantage+ Audience or going broad with original audiences. But we underestimate just how much remarketing is happening.

Let me explain…

Audience Segments

We define our engaged audience and existing customers audience segments within Advertising Settings using custom audiences.

But you can’t use custom audiences for your Facebook and Instagram followers or engagement with your ads.

My audience segments are defined with website and customer list custom audiences.

More is Happening

Let me show you something…

I’m running ad set using original audiences and targeting remarketing groups (no expansion). In addition to website and customer list custom audiences, I’ve included my Facebook and Instagram followers.

When I do the breakdown by audience segments, a large portion is dedicated to New Audience. These would come primarily from my followers.

What it Means

Keep this in mind that these people aren’t included in the audience segments. We won’t know exactly how much remarketing happens naturally that would reach these groups. It could be a lot or a little.

But this is a reminder that, by definition, Meta will prioritize pixel history, conversion data, and PRIOR ENGAGEMENT WITH YOUR ADS when using Advantage+ Audience.

The post More Remarketing Happens Than You Think appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

I use Advantage+ Audience in most cases right now, but there are always exceptions.

Let’s discuss…

The Exceptions

While it’s great for purchases, there is potential for issues with any other optimization.

A prime example is businesses that serve customers who are predominantly women. While this tends to work out when optimizing for purchases, the algorithm will spend your budget on men who are willing to click and engage — if that’s the action you were wanting (optimizing for link clicks, landing page views, ThruPlay, or post engagement).

This can even be an issue for leads. If your business serves clients who are in a specific age group, that tends to work out when you optimize for purchases. But, that won’t stop people from an age group you don’t serve from completing your form.

The important point here is whether people outside of your target demographic are likely to perform the action you are optimizing for — and if that action will be low-quality because they don’t fit that target. This will throw off the algorithm for top of the funnel optimization.

Why it’s a Problem

The reason that this is an issue when you use Advantage+ Audience is that age maximum and gender are suggestions.

They aren’t tight constraints. You can’t prevent your ads from being shown to people outside of those demographic suggestions. If people perform the action you want, Meta assumes it helps you.

Audience Controls do not include age maximum or gender.

If results go off the rails because of this, you’ll need to switch to original audiences. There you can control age maximum and gender.

Sill Need Original Audiences?

Honestly, if Meta just changed this so that age maximum and gender were audience controls, there would be very few reasons to use original audiences. Since audiences expand anyway when optimizing for conversions, link clicks, and landing page views, optimization would behave similarly with these common controls.

The one remaining issue with eliminating original audiences would be remarketing. You are unable to isolate a remarketing audience when using Advantage+ Audience (custom audiences are suggestions).

Of course, remarketing does happen naturally now, but there are times when remarketing ad sets that don’t expand can be useful. Meta would need to come up with a solution for this, too.

I do believe that Meta will eliminate original audiences eventually, but these are a couple of major sticking points before that were to happen. Even as someone who uses it often, I know there are times when it has weaknesses that are solved with original audiences.

If you could restrict by age and gender, would you use Advantage+ Audience more?

The post How Meta Could Improve Advantage+ Audience appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

What’s up with event testing?

One of the ways you can test your conversion events is within Events Manager. Here’s the problem I’m having…

The Problem

1. Click “Test Events”

2. Select “Website” as the channel

3. Select to confirm website events

4. Paste a URL you want to test

5. Click “Open Website”

At minimum, the page view event will fire once you do this, but you can perform some other actions if you want. Then return to Test Events in Events Manager to view the events firing.

This is an example of what you should see (from a prior blog post)…

But, what am I seeing? Nothing.

Nothing changed. No updates. This should update in real time. I’ve even left the page up for several minutes and it doesn’t change.

It’s a Likely Bug

It’s not a pixel issue because my pixel is fine. Everything else in Events Manager shows that my events are firing as normal. I’ve tried multiple pages and it doesn’t matter.

This isn’t a new tool to me, so it shouldn’t be user error. This is a bug.

In the meantime, you can still use the Pixel Helper Chrome extension, but my preference is this built-in event testing tool.

Anyone else running into this?

The post Event Testing Tool Bug in Events Manager appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

Turn off comments on ads?

Meta’s made several announcements about new features during Advertising Week 2024. This is one of them.

Where to Find It

At the bottom of your ad set, under Placements, click See More Options.

If you have this update, it will appear under Inventory Filter.

New: Control comments on your ads. Now you can turn off comments for all Facebook and Instagram feed ads in an ad set.

You’ll have two options:

• Public (Default)
• No One

Meta says that Comment Controls are currently available to a limited number of businesses, and they’ll test and iterate before rolling it out more broadly.

Should You Use This?

You probably don’t have this yet, but should you use it when you do?

On the surface, it sounds awesome. It’s a feature that’s been requested repeatedly over the years. You no longer need to deal with trolls and spam comments. No more replying, hiding, reporting, and deleting.

But, Meta uses comments as a signal for ad quality. Engagement drives virality. Turning comments off will likely drive up costs.

While this will make sense in a small minority of situations, use it as a last resort. The danger is that advertisers will turn off comments out of laziness. Don’t let that be you.

Do you have this? Will you use it?

The post Turn Off Comments On Ads appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

I’ve realized that I took a significant risk by preaching a simple approach to Meta advertising. Simple doesn’t sell.

But you can make a whole lot of money by complicating it. Let me explain…

Complex Advertising System

If I told you that I have a secret advertising system called 5-5-5, you’d probably listen.

1. Create 5 campaigns, one for each step of the funnel.

• Awareness
• Engagement
• Traffic
• Leads
• Sales

2. Create 5 ad sets within each campaign to reach your ideal audience.

• Broad
• Lookalikes
• Interests
• Remarketing top of funnel
• Remarketing bottom of funnel

3. 5 ads within each ad set, using my “proven technique” for creating ad copy and creative.

This is easy to brand. You could create an entire course around it, and someone probably has.

(Does 5-5-5 exist? No idea, but I wouldn’t be shocked.)

Simple Doesn’t Sell

We assume that because it’s complicated, it must be better. When I preach a simpler approach to advertising, people think there’s a catch. It can’t be that easy. (To be clear, getting results still isn’t easy, but the approach is simple.)

I can’t sell a course on a simple campaign structure. No one would buy it, and it would be about a page long.

There are a whole lot of people who profit off of making advertising as complicated as possible. I just want you to think about that.

Sometimes, the simplest approach is the best solution.

The post 5-5-5 Advertising System (Simple Doesn’t Sell) appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

This drives me crazy…

There’s a huge labeling and language problem with advertising, and it’s all Meta’s fault. It doesn’t matter if I’m talking to a new advertiser or a seasoned veteran.

Let’s discuss…

The Labeling Problem

Advertisers use the terms Advantage and Advantage+ interchangeably. I always need to ask clarifying questions so that I know what they’re talking about.

Advertisers will simply say “I’m using Advantage+ for this” or “I’m using Advantage for that.”

Does that mean you’re using Advantage+ Shopping? Advantage+ Audience? Advantage Detailed Targeting or Advantage Lookalike?

It matters.

I find that in most cases, advertisers simply don’t know. They aren’t totally sure. They don’t know the difference.

It’s frustrating, and it’s not their fault. Meta has decided to name at least a dozen features with the Advantage and Advantage+ labels.

This makes it harder for people to learn advertising, not easier. And it makes it harder for me to help them.

The post Problem with Meta Advantage and Advantage+ appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

Are you violating Meta’s custom audience terms for customer lists?

I actually wrote about this more than a decade ago, and much of it remains relevant today.

There are two sections of Meta’s Customer List Custom Audience Terms that I wonder about. Let’s discuss…

1. Rights and Permissions

The first may be the most obvious. But it’s one that advertisers seem to be most motivated to break.

To paraphrase, you represent that you have the rights, permissions, and lawful basis to use the data. Is it your data? Was it shared with you? Did you scrape it? Did you buy it?

3. Handling Opt-Outs

The third is a bit murkier. I may be misinterpreting the meaning, but there is certainly something here to be concerned about. If I am interpreting it correctly, advertisers are certainly violating this on a regular basis without realizing it.

Essentially, you represent that the data doesn’t relate to anyone who has opted out of using their data this way. You need to remove them. What about if someone opted out of your email list? Can you still target them?

My Interpretation

My interpretation of both is simple. To be safe, the customer list used for custom audiences needs to be of your customers who opted in to hearing from you.

If you can legally email someone due to their subscription, you can include them in your custom audience. Everything else is a gray area, if not a violation that can get your account shut down.

We surely know that some advertisers create custom audiences that stretch, if not outright break, the rules. Are you?

The post Custom Audience Terms for Customer Lists appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

I don’t have a crystal ball, but it’s not all that difficult to predict the future of Meta ads targeting if you follow the trends.

Let’s think about it…

Algorithmic Targeting

Advantage+ Audience is the default, but you still have the option to switch to original audiences — for now.

I’m confident that option will be eliminated at some point. Maybe not in a year, but Meta’s created confusing options that often behave in similar ways.

Not only is there minimal difference in the ways that Advantage+ Audience, Advantage Detailed Targeting, and Advantage Lookalike work, but advertisers rarely understand the minor variances in the first place.

For the most extreme projection, look no further than Advantage+ Shopping, where there are virtually no targeting inputs at all.

There’s every reason to believe that we could see that for all objectives one day.

Less Control

The bottom line is this: When predicting the future of targeting, err on the side of less control than more. We’re not getting that control back.

I know the response is that this couldn’t work right now. There are reasons to use original audiences. I know that algorithmic targeting is far from perfect, and I’m not advocating for a quick fix.

Meta will need to correct some things first. My bet is that the fix will actually be in performance goal optimization. More and better options to reach your ideal audience by defining your goal action.

For example, instead of your targeting inputs, advertisers could have more performance goal options to define what they want. Right now, many of the options are generic, which can lead to low-quality results.

What do you think?

The post What Will Targeting Look Like a Year From Now? appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

Let’s talk about how we got here with ad targeting…

It’s not by accident. It’s not because Meta simply wants to make things more difficult for us. There are specific events that motivated this.

The Events

First, consider advertiser abuse of targeting for nefarious reasons. There was Cambridge Analytica. Advertisers used targeting to manipulate elections. Facebook also faced multiple lawsuits for discrimination related to targeting.

The combination of these things led to Special Ad Categories, which limited targeting options in those cases. Meta also removed thousands of targeting options to prevent targeting discrimination.

Then came various privacy laws, the EU, cookie tracking, and iOS 14. There’s been a lot, and I know I’m missing a few.

It’s All Connected

My point is this…

We often hear about how advertising is harder because Meta took away targeting options. But the reason for less control, for expanded audiences, and algorithmic targeting is an accumulation of all of these issues.

It seems like some advertisers think Meta will reverse course on these decisions if we complain loudly enough. But this isn’t about making advertisers happy or unhappy. We aren’t going back to those days and you need to accept that.

In fact, it’s obvious that control over targeting will become the exception, if it isn’t eliminated completely. Advantage+ Shopping could be the eventual model.

You can fight it. Or you can accept it and find a way to succeed in this environment.

The post How We Got Here With Ad Targeting appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

Remember Opportunity Score?

Way back in April, I wrote a blog post about the Opportunity Score in Ads Manager. Well, now it seems to be gone.

What it Was

Opportunity Score gamified accepting delivery recommendations.

In theory, if you were following best practices, you’d have a score of a 100. It didn’t mean that you should always accept recommendations blindly, but I still found it to be helpful.

It was mostly a silly feature, but Opportunity Score motivated me to at least review the ways I could optimize my advertising. And I was absolutely guilty of accepting recommendations just to boost my score. I’d raise my budget a dollar so that I could say that I scaled to get some extra points.

Does it Matter?

Maybe this was just a test. Maybe Meta decided advertisers didn’t use it or it wasn’t all that helpful.

I doubt advertisers will care one way or another, and it’s possible I totally missed that it’s been gone for a while. But I didn’t necessarily hate it either.

How about you?

The post Opportunity Score is Gone appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

The most hated Advantage+ Creative enhancement is getting a rebrand…

Let me show you…

Overlays

When you use the advanced preview when creating your ad, filter by Advantage+ Creative. You will not find Image Templates.

No, it’s not because Meta got rid of it. It’s been renamed Overlays. If you hover the tooltip for Add Overlays, it reads “formerly image template.”

If you cycle through the versions, you’ll see many of the problems advertisers complain about related to image templates. It’s just freaking ugly.

Of course, you can make some minor tweaks if you click Adjust Fonts and Colors. But those options are minimal. You can adjust the text style and the background color. That’s it.

Should You Turn it On?

Overall, I still leave this on in most cases because it should only be used to your benefit. But if you have a sensitive client who will freak out when they see it, maybe turn it off.

Do you turn overlays off?

The post Image Templates are Now Overlays appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.