Bram's Buzz - Edition 8, 2024

Lots of new updates in the 8th edition of Bram's Buzz. The newsletter that keeps you updated on new features, insights and more about Meta Ads and all things digital marketing.

Thanks so much for subscribing. You'll never miss any of the good stuff!

This newsletter covers updates from Week 10-13, 2024 + FREE Tutorials for getting additional ad performance insights in Meta Reporting and Google Analytics 4.

But first...

Should I reveal my 'secrets' on how I gather all new features and updates?

Vote here ??

Me and my 7 sisters

I got interviewed by Omar Reyes . Read the full interview on my blog.

Most important Meta Ads March updates

??? There's a new 'actions' column in Ads Manager reporting. This new column shows Recommendations and Alerts for your ads. As always, be sure to review what's being suggested and make informed decisions based on your current performance whether or not to apply the suggested changes.

?? Meta is rolling out a new Advantage+ creative optimization feature to automatically optimize video ads to fit Reels and other 9:16 aspect ratio creatives on the mobile Facebook and Instagram apps.

??? When running Advantage+ catalog ads, you will soon be able to include branded videos or customer demonstration videos, in addition to static images.

?? New support for adding 'Hero' images in Catalog ads. When available for your ad account, you can upload a hero image in the center of your Advantage+ catalog ad. Meta will then use AI to dynamically show the best products from your catalog to improve performance.

? When running Reminder ads, you will soon be able to add external links to new products or sales in the ad itself. Coming later this year, Reminder ads will also become available in Reels.

?? You can now highlight your promo codes in Facebook and Instagram ads. Find this option at the ad level for Sales campaigns. You can choose to 'Automatically source codes' or 'Manually add a code'. If you choose the first option, Meta will check your website for additional codes. You can then remove any promo codes from the list before publishing your ad. You can only highlight one promo code at a time.

??? Meta is expanding ads containing product tags to the Facebook feed. Before this update, it was only available on Instagram. Ads with product tags will become available to all businesses, without the need to have a Shop. Great update!

??? When editing the Advantage+ creative optimization, watch out for a message about the auto selection of a catalog. Review which catalog is automatically selected for the?'Add catalog items' creative optimization. Be sure to review the catalog and select the relevant one when working with multiple catalogs in your business manager account. This will prevent catalog items showing up in ads that may be irrelevant.

?? Meta is rolling out Advantage detailed targeting for Traffic campaigns to more ad accounts. This update is enabled by default when you optimize for link clicks or landing page view in Traffic campaigns. This option can't be turned off and it will automatically go beyond your detailed targeting settings when it's likely to improve results.

?? When using Advantage+ audience, you can now also exclude people who match specific detailed targeting. You can use this option to help refine your intended audience. Find this option in the Advantage+ audience settings under 'Detailed targeting'.

?? Pre-orders are now available to businesses in the US using checkout on Facebook and Instagram. Pre-order are a popular merchandising model where you can offer products to customers with the intention of delivering at a future date. The pre-order feature allows you to gauge interest and manufacture items rather than guess at popularity and either over or under produce products. You can create pre-orders in Commerce Manager.

?? New 'Basket insights' for retailers working with partners. When a brand (the advertiser) runs an ad and sends a lead to a retailer's site to check out, that person may view or buy other items along with the product featured in the ad.

Basket insights provide information about the categories of those other purchases that included the brand and advertiser’s products. The purchases counted are attributable to the brand’s campaign as long as at least one product from that brand is included in the basket at the time of purchase.

??? When using video in ads, you can add 'Audio Descriptions'. This is different from 'Captions' as it allows advertisers to explain visual elements of their videos for people who use assistive technology. To add an audio description, edit the video ad placements and find this option under 'Accessibility' at the ad level.

??? When no Advantage+ creative enhancements are activated, you will now see a button 'Try it out' to try out creative Enhancements for your ad. You can find this CTA in the dedicated Advantage+ creative section at the ad level. Seeing this CTA also confirms that you don't have any activated Enhancements for your ad.

?? 'Ad account settings' are moving to a new dedicated 'Advertising settings' page. In the Advertising settings, you can manage different account settings used to create ads. You can still find Ad account setup, Pages and Notification settings in the original Ad account settings.

'Engaged Customers' segment for Adv+ Shopping campaigns

?? A new 'Engaged Customers' audience segment for Advantage+ Shopping campaigns is here. This new feature allows you to define people who engaged with your business, but didn't purchase or sign up for your services.

You can then get additional details in Ads Reporting on the following 3 customer segments: New Customers, Existing Customers and Engaged Customers.

Before this update, advertisers were only able to add Custom Audiences to the 'Existing Customers' audience segment. Note that these updates impact audience reporting only and do not affect budget controls.

Learn more about Engaged Customers.

?? In the Meta 'Ad account setup', you can now also add specific URL parameters for 'Engaged Customers'. This allows you to add audience segments to your website URLs for tracking different audience segments' performance in third party tracking tools like Google Analytics 4.

Learn more about URL parameters for Adv+ Shopping campaigns.

Free Tutorials

Custom Meta Ads Insights report for GA4

I've created a tutorial on how to create a custom Meta Ads Insights dashboard in GA4 using the newly supported UTM parameters utm_creative_format, utm_marketing_tactic and utm_source_platform.

It shows website sessions and revenue coming from retargeting versus prospecting Meta Ads and also provides a quick view on the creative format sending the traffic for different Meta Placements. The 'Manual campaigns' report shows all traffic coming from campaigns that hold manual UTM parameters.

Click here to follow this tutorial.

Are people searching for your business after seeing your ad on Facebook or Instagram?

I've created a quick tutorial on how to create a custom 'Go to Search' ?? metric for Meta Ads Manager that allows you to get some thought-provoking insights.

Click here to follow this tutorial.

That's all folks! ??

Thanks for reading the 8th edition of Bram's Buzz.

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All the best,

Bram