Bram's Buzz - Edition 1, 2023

Hi folks! This is the very first edition of Bram's Buzz. My newsletter that will keep you updated on new features, insights and more about Facebook Ads and all things digital marketing.

Before diving into the content, I would like to thank you for subscribing to this newsletter. From now on, you will never miss any of the good stuff.

This newsletter covers updates from Week 34-35, 2023

Most important Meta Ads updates + BONUS: Super Sheet // More buzz // Most insightful comment //

Most important Meta Ads updates

Advantage+ audience targeting ?? + Super Sheet ??

Meta is rolling out new AI-powered audience targeting features. This update will use your targeting specifications as suggestions to automatically find your ideal audience.

You can choose to enable this targeting option at the Ad Set level in Meta Ads Manager. Most likely this will become the suggested way of audience targeting going forward.

Here's how it looks in Ads Manager:

Free Super Sheet ??

As this update promotes a new approach of audience targeting, I've created a Super Sheet containing all defaults set by original audience targeting versus the new Advantage+ audience.

Access this Super Sheet at the following link:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1enB3nOucUuutWXYzZhiWdZ97GWCv6I-XkpjGclaNoBU/edit?usp=sharing

Read more about this important update:

See how the potential audience size differs when switching from the original targeting option to Advantage+ audience:

Send traffic to your Instagram profile using Ads Manager ??

You can now create a campaign in Meta Ads Manager itself to send traffic to your Instagram profile. If you target the right audiences, you could leverage that traffic to grow post engagements and followers on Instagram.

Here's how to configure this new Traffic option in Ads Manager:

Read more about this update:

Meta Ad Library update for advertisers targeting EU locations

You can now see a lot more ad targeting and delivery details from advertisers targeting EU locations. It will show ad details about targeted locations, ages, genders and reach metrics.

This update is part of the 'European Union transparency' that provides additional information for ads that were shown on Meta technologies anywhere in the EU.

Here's an example for one specific ad:

Read more about this update:

More buzz ??

• TikTok announces the launch of the 'Search Ads Toggle'. This is a new feature that allows advertisers to serve ads in TikTok search results. [source]
• Google announces that we will be able to deploy a Google tag within Tag Manager starting in early September.?GA4 Configuration tags will change to Google tags and will gain new capabilities, including settings variables. [source]
• Meta provides new insights into how AI systems rank content by releasing 22 system cards for Facebook and Instagram. You will get insights on how AI systems rank content for Feed, Reels, Stories, and more. [source]
• LinkedIn expands 'Collaborative articles' and members can contribute and earn Community Top Voice badges. [source]
• LinkedIn now lets you retarget audiences by document. You can create audiences of people who engaged with one or more of your document ads. [source]
• Apple launches its 'Ad Repository', following Meta, Google and TikTok Ad Libraries. You can now search and view Apple-delivered ads on the App Store. [source]

Most insightful comment ??

When people write insightful comments on my LinkedIn posts, I put them in the newsletter spotlight.

Will Morrison shared some interesting feedback on the question:

"What should Meta's product team be working on?"

I asked Will to elaborate on a few of his inputs.

Here's what Will is adding:

#4: For an effective Meta strategy, using diverse placements is crucial. These placements often have ratios like 1:1, 9:16, and 16:9. Although some placements favor certain ratios, when combined with other ads, they follow the ad set's chosen ratios. This complicates optimization as unique creatives get their own ad sets, potentially reducing their impressions. Enabling ad-level placement selection would streamline optimization, merging various ads and formats into one set, reducing complexity during ad creation.

#7: CBO (Campaign Budget Optimization) is a powerful tool when leveraging multiple ad sets. However, the current setup is an all or nothing model which effectively limits the ability to leverage the benefits of CBO while also isolating specific ad sets at the ad set budget level. This is especially true for conversion campaigns during promotional times. An example would be having an always-on budget running from October through December and not having the ability to have promotional sprint based ad sets for Black Friday or Boxing Day to throttle spend on specific messaging. Moreover, if the ad set budget could have some sort of algorithmic influence without competing against CBO ad sets outright, that would ideally assist with learning phase delays being in the same campaign.

Join the discussion:

That's all folks! ??

This is the first edition of Bram's Buzz newsletter, so I know there is a lot of room for improvement. Your feedback will help me make every new edition better than the last one. Let me know what you think. Any feedback is much appreciated.

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All the best,

Bram