Meta's custom audience sucks ????>First-Party Audience ????

Once again, hola!

I guess every Meta announcement is nothing short of a mere heart attack for media buyers.

Just a glimpse of the disappointment...

Having said that, what can this update do to advertisers?

Advanced Custom Audiences for Retargeting? Not Anymore!

Once upon a time, businesses could track every little interaction—like knowing someone checked out /sales/dresses?product=10. That's right, marketers were out there building sniper-level custom audiences with precise URL tracking. But Meta has decided to kindly snatch that away. Now, we're stuck with boring predefined parameters. Yay?

What do media buyers lose?

Bye-bye, Precision!

No more targeting based on every tiny action. Without URL tracking, brands are left guessing their segmented audiences.

Thanks, Privacy!

Meta's privacy push means marketers lose fine-tuned ad performance. Privacy wins; targeting suffers.

However, Meta’s custom audiences have always not been very favorable to media buyers. A quick backstory on that.

Meta really stores the data for 180 days? Umm, bullsh*t.

Multiple times I've heard from media buyers that Meta stores the data. What does retention for 180 days mean? That means... ummm, bullsh*t?

Here is the proof comparing first-party audiences vs. Meta pixel audiences for 90 days of website visitor data.

Meta Pixel Audience vs. First-Party Audience

Meta was able to match only 30% of the total size, but first-party audiences were able to match almost 70-75%.

Now just imagine how you can leverage all your cart abandoners for your festive sales season. These are the users you paid for to visit but got stuck in the 7-14 day retargeting loop, chasing new customers and fighting amongst fellow competitors.

You Own the Data—Let Meta Just Show Ads to the People You Choose

Here's a quick customer story where we are seeing a 30% reduced CPP for the retargeting audience compared to the top-funnel new acquisition.

This means retargeting the high-intent audience is easier, and they are the low-hanging fruits who are likely to convert since they are product-aware and solution-aware. All it requires is a nudge to nurture.

All you need is to reach them.

Was that a good dopamine hit? Hmm, I guess it should have been. Here are a couple of dopamine kicks on how to leverage these non-purchased website visitors of yours.

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→ Reach Cart Abandoners: Not Just Known, But Anonymous Website Visitors Too

Shopify/Meta stores miss personalized marketing due to 7-day browser cookie expiration. However, 1PD OPs help—extended server-side cookies enable re-engagement beyond 180 days via email and WhatsApp.

→ High ROAS High Traffic Audience

We conducted an analysis for one of the brands where we pulled all their style IDs and created a report categorizing each one into segments like high traffic with high ROAS, high traffic with low ROAS, low traffic with low ROAS, and low traffic with high ROAS.

This analysis helped us identify that the sweet spots for retargeting were the high traffic with high ROAS and low traffic with high ROAS segments, allowing us to pivot our strategy accordingly.

→ Tracking Profits, Optimizing, and Targeting Users Based on Their Discount Preferences

It goes without saying that non-discount buyers always make the profit margin bigger, and ROAS shines.

By segmenting users who have added discounted or non-discounted products to their cart, we can retarget them across various channels, including ads, emails, and WhatsApp.

This approach allows us to drive more high-value, non-discount purchases.

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I think we're good now. Don't these announcements hit harder? Let's do 1PD OPs—that is, you own the data, and advertising platforms just advertise.

Okay—what do we talk about next week? Hmm, how to live peacefully during the festive seasons and not burn the pockets? Catch you with a couple of strategies to maintain sales and ROAS momentum even in the highest competitive season.