For a long time, Meta has been recommending broad targeting to marketers. Since they have the most user data, it makes sense that letting their algorithm freely explore a broad audience should give the best results.
This became challenging with the iOS signal loss when we all witnessed a significant drop in performance and were forced to lower spend. Databox reports that 40% of SMBs and 50% of agencies say performance from Facebook advertising either stayed the same or performed worse in 2021. The average price per ad decreased by 14%, driven by a reduction in advertiser demand. In 2022 digital ad spend tumbled down from the largest annual growth of 29.8% YOY to 8.5%.
The decline can also be attributed to creative ad fatigue among audiences, increased competition for consumer attention, and changing user behaviors.
How did the digital landscape change?
All Meta platforms are currently facing several challenges, including losing users' screen time, and decrease in ad sales. 60% of businesses reported that Facebook Ads became more expensive in 2021. The same survey found that 59% of businesses had a lower ROI on Facebook Ads in 2021 compared to the previous year.
Luckily for marketers, it seems that Meta has figured out a way to bring performance back with better modeling, AI, and optimization algorithms. They’ve made positive progress on mitigating downside risks from ad signal loss, with their own ad distribution format - Advantage+ shopping campaigns.
To get the best results, Meta suggests relying on their optimization capabilities. Let them handle the audience and do their thing, while you tackle creative enablement.
- In 2020, they revealed that 56% of a campaign’s sales ROI comes from a quality ad creative, and this has grown even more important as targeting has become trickier. Quality creative doesn't just enhance CTRs - Meta's ad auction favors quality creative, leading to reduced auction costs and lower CPM.
In Meta’s case with Home Centre, implementing Dynamic Creative into Advantage+ raised ROAS by 40%, decreased CPP by 82%, and 71% of cost per “add to cart” actions.
This puts a modern performance marketer in an interesting position when exploring and testing more creatives. Producing, testing and optimizing 150 ads is not something many of us have the resources for. Nor can we afford the race with time.
So what can you do to manage creative ad fatigue proactively and align your performance with creative?
Get the most out of Advantage+ shopping campaigns
Meta’s ultimate solution for efficient data usage (that is, of what you’re left with) for driving online sales, Advantage+ shopping campaigns, brings together machine learning, fewer inputs, and simplified audience options, so marketers can focus more on creativity and strategy.
In a more technical way - Advantage+ lets you combine static ads with dynamic product ads and deliver them to broad audiences by combining both prospects and existing customers under one campaign, identifying and pushing for the highest value ones.
It also enables automated testing, evaluating up to 150 creative combinations to deliver the highest-performing ad variations, which are then automatically delivered to the most valuable shoppers.
For performance marketers, this means fewer campaign hurdles and technical worries. But what about the ultimate lever Meta says marketers should control - creative?
Creative is the new targeting
Creative is the most important factor when it comes to performance. Highlighting its role in driving sales, Meta reports that 56% of campaign performance can be explained through creativity.
In fact, 70% of Paid Social success comes from engaging the audience with the right creative. That’s why top marketers build, deploy and test creatives faster than their competitors.
There is a way to efficiently meet creative demand under intense pressure.
Hunch’s creative impact on beating ad fatigue
Creative is the next opportunity (post-everything) to start making more data-driven decisions to move your business forward.
Hunch’s DPA solution brings life back to product catalog images by combining static imagery with dynamic elements, enriching the template design in making beautiful and engaging ads that convert.
You can:
- Add data.
- Transform data.
- Use any feed and make it Meta-compliant.
- Change your feed content without changing the original data.
- Use all the data you have through custom fields, and use them in making creatives.
- And with all that - build completely custom Dynamic templates.
Designers and marketers alike use Hunch’s Creative Studio, the industry-leading creative studio, to build captivating creative for both image and video ads.
For performance marketers struggling to build and launch enough creatives, to reach their customers at the right time with the right message, who need technical support and additional design resources in order to enhance their Dynamic ads - Hunch can help you in pushing new beautiful DPAs out of the window, stress-free.
Extending Meta’s capabilities
With Hunch, you can test up to 20 templates per catalog within a single campaign, enabling more creative agility under your, now everyday, intense pressure.
How will this affect your future setup?
For testing more creative, you need to produce more. The options will multiply endlessly when we enable automated creative for Advantage+. You won’t just have DPAs, single ads or carousels, but more product videos and slideshows to put in the test engine and determine the best-performing products with the help of Google Analytics.
Ad insertion for Advantage+ shopping campaigns - Get creative, get better results
You’re anxious about pausing your existing Advantage+ shopping campaigns on Meta that work because you don’t want to lose campaign performance. But, to stay competitive and ensure the best performance, you’ll need to freshen them up with enhanced attractive templates for your DPAs.
Ad insertion enables you to connect your existing Advantage+ shopping campaigns and enrich them with new engaging ads created through Hunch. Yes, not just one creative, but multiple ads with multiple DPA designs.
There’s no need to create a separate Hunch campaign from scratch, but you can reuse your old always-on Advantage+ campaign setup, now with more ads containing Hunch dynamic templates. This way you’re adding more high-quality feed-based creatives to the existing pool.
Why should you inject a Hunch ad into an existing Meta campaign?
- Because Meta favors building and testing multiple designs.
- You can have impactful creative that boosts performance.
- Creative is imperative within Meta’s recommendation and ‘explore audience’ algorithms.
- ‘Cause it’s easy to implement it and the results will be enough to justify the costs to your boss.
Ad insertion lets you enrich your existing Advantage+ campaigns. There’s no starting from scratch, you just give the campaign more options.
Now, spend. Even if you insert a Hunch ad into a campaign, it stays a Meta campaign. You simply spend only on Hunch-produced ads. The other ads are part of the total spend, not Hunch spend.
How does Hunch fit in? By giving you creative freedom for the most awesome ads.
Hunch AI Lab: Powering creative performance
In the creative evolution of Paid Social advertising, the unsurpassed standard are Dynamic Product Ads (DPA). Experimenting with its creative elements is a marketer’s only playground, in case your clients aren't settling with comforting plain product ads.
Liberating modern marketers from all creative roadblocks with transformative outcomes, the Hunch platform's AI-powered features - Background removal tool, color discovery, and dynamic layout adjustments, enable designers to create visually appealing ads without being constrained by plain product images. This enhances the overall quality of product ads and leads to more engaging and informative designs.
For Performance teams working in agencies, this allows you to optimize campaigns by creating and testing multiple templates and different design elements. In turn, it improves ROI by reducing the number of impressions required for a conversion and optimizing ad spend.
Don't let good be the enemy of great
Creative is the new targeting. In order to deliver countless creatives with precision and speed, you need to unlock the full power of DPA.
Why settle for generic output? You’re aware of what works and what you can actually deliver with the resources you have.
This is why Advantage+ shopping campaigns are an effective way (especially) for agencies working with eCommerce brands looking to maximize reach and performance with less manual work. As we mentioned before, don’t worry about the audience. Focus on producing the best possible creative, scale, test, and optimize, without breaking a sweat.
