Suffering from conversion rate issues since the end of June?
Suffering from conversion rate issues since the end of June?
You're not alone.
'Something' has gone wrong.
We're still investigating.
Some of our accounts saw issues from 29th June onwards.
I've seen many others complaining of similar in this group and other forums.
Some accounts (and especially non-US) seem ok.
Few considerations:
CCPA
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(https://oag.ca.gov/privacy/ccpa)
Impact: you're likely losing/going to lose tracking on Californian users. This was announced in January but not communicated very well to business owners.
Facebook have created a tool for your account to set State specific terms (for the US) which mean you can have multiple data policies in place by state.
This is GDPR all over again but where GDPR impacted a whole continent (Europe), CCPA currently only impacts California, with other states potentially to follow.
If you have access to a developer take a look at https://developers.facebook.com/docs/marketing-apis/data-processing-options# which gives you a few options on how to manage Californian users and avoid an all in or all out policy.
p.s. if this all reads as data-geeky stuff you don't want to worry about, just know that if California and in fact US traffic is important to you, you better get to know this.
If you've implemented GDPR before you're about 90% ahead of others.
Check out something like https://www.cookiebot.com/en/ccpa-cookies/ if you want help on setting your website/cookies up in general to be CCPA (and GDPR) compliant
4TH JULY SALES
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A curveball here is 4th July and potential shift in consumer behaviour, if any, on their July 4th plans.
The only thing I'd say say for this is that whilst J4 sales may be having an impact I Don't believe this is completely to blame
COVID-19
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There's the concerns around covid-19 but in particular the 2nd wave is what's impacting consumer mindset the most.
This could be the post March honeymoon with consumer buying slowing down but I'm not convinced.
FACEBOOK ALGORITHM
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I believe there's something with the algorithm that's not being discussed.
Facebook admitted that the double counting issue many of us encountered on the 19th actually was occurring on and off for 2 weeks before then.
The week following this, our stable accounts saw fluctuations which we've yet to fully recover from.
JULY ADVERTISING BOYCOTT
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It has been interesting to see the businesses take a stance against hate to get Facebook to make improvements. The message has been heard (https://www.bbc.com/news/amp/technology-53262860).
Whether July's overall CPMs are impacted by purely that will remain to be seen. We've seen some accounts drop CPM but hard to tell if it correlates with the boycotts.
If anything, if competition was down we'd see an uptick on conversions too right?
END OF QUARTER BUDGET DUMPS (Q2)
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The end of quarter (eg Jan to Mar is Q1, Apr to Jun is Q2) often sees turbulence in the auction as larger spending agencies and brands dump 'brand' budget into the account. This is usually a bigger issue at the end of Q1 (also traditionally the end of the financial year for many businesses).
However I don't think this is as big an issue as the algo/reporting bug, which I believe is the bigger culprit.
WHAT TO DO?
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We're continuing for now, trying to preserve budget/profits where we can and perhaps applying more pausing/budget reduction than we'd otherwise like. It's not the time to scale up in the US with the auction unstable. It would seem many other countries are fine and this is mainly US centric.
Don't panic and start changing winning strategies/tactics because chances are if you had success in the weeks/months before mid-June, the problem is with Facebook's auction, not you. This will all depend on your account, niche and competition.
Remember: if strategies have brought you success, don't suddenly adapt them due to short-term issues. Consider the right tactics for your business and be ready for the positive rebound.
Would love to hear your experiences, thoughts and actions around issues you're facing in your accounts with conversion rates.
Credits: Depesh Mandalia