Despite the controversy surrounding Facebook advertising, most experts believe it will continue to grow at a rapid pace.
In 2020, eMarketer predicted an 18 percent increase in overall media ad spending in 2021. Regardless of the global epidemic that impacted so much of our daily lives.
Digital ad revenue is expected to reach 460 billion dollars by 2024, according to Statista.
In the vast majority of situations, this prediction came true.
There’s still more. Advertisers in the United States will spend 32 percent more on Facebook advert cost in 2021 ($50.30 billion) than they did in 2020, according to eMarketer.
Digital marketers continue to invest in Facebook ads in order to contact clients and expand their company.
The fact that consumers have historically accepted advertising is a major factor in these rising trends.
They’ve become accustomed to pausing in the middle of a Facebook View binge or scrolling through Instagram tales to watch an ad.
At times, it’s a reluctant acceptance, and at others, it’s even delightful.
They want to be able to have fun with advertising. They want ads that entertain them, educate them, and provide value to their lives. That might explain why there’s been such a noticeable trend away from hyper-segmentation and audience targeting and toward greater creative—particularly video. Artificial intelligence, of course, will play a greater role in getting that excellent ad creative in front of the right people at the right time. Even yet, it’s up to advertisers to ensure that their ads convert once they’ve been delivered.
In this article, we will be examining some Facebook Ad targeting ideas for the next year.
Latest updates in Facebook Ads Targeting
You may have missed certain significant improvements that began rolling out in mid-2021 since keeping pace of Facebook advertising updates is nearly a full-time job. Let’s take a quick look at how and why these changes are likely to affect your ad viewers.
Apple introduced iOS 14.5, an operating system with tight privacy controls for applications, in April 2021. This iOS version mandated that developers adopt the App Tracking Transparency framework, which allows users to choose whether or not to enable applications to track their activities.
Only 4% of iPhone and iPad users in the United States decided to accept app monitoring shortly after the new iOS was released. As a result, almost all iOS users have turned off the ability for Facebook and other applications to track their activities. Because almost half of smartphone users own an iPhone (according to Statista), this widespread opt-out necessitated significant adjustments to Facebook marketing.
To comply with the new privacy regulations, Facebook has to reduce the capabilities of some of its most profitable targeting choices on its advertising platform. In July 2021, Facebook began implementing improvements to advertisers’ targeting, tracking, and reporting capabilities.
For the coming years, the following trends will come in handy when running your Facebook Ads:
- Restriction of Data Will Become More Common
Data privacy is at the top of this year’s trend list, and, if I had to bet, it will remain a trend that digital advertisers constantly monitor indefinitely. The sheer volume of data, along with the constantly changing data privacy landscape, has a direct influence on digital advertising’ business.
The iOS 14 release was one recent feature that piqued my curiosity. While the iOS 14 upgrade has had a significant impact, digital advertisers that utilize Facebook and Google now face an uphill struggle in terms of advertising effectiveness.
As a result of this and other changes, digital advertisers’ access to consumer data is dwindling. Facebook advertising is no longer a viable choice for certain businesses. As additional firms follow Apple’s lead, you may expect to lose more data access in the future. By 2023, Google Chrome, for example, intends to eliminate browser cookies.
However, take a careful look at what’s going on here: the Apples and Google Chromes of the world are attempting to offer consumers more control over their data. Why not take advantage of it? Customers nowadays choose providers who secure their data, according to brands.
- It’s more important than ever to be creative.
Marketers have recently become captivated with data and the capacity to segment. We’re included! For a long time, Facebook advertising was all about segmenting to find the right demographic, which can still be extremely powerful if done correctly. However, when access to such data becomes increasingly limited, marketers must return to the basics.
They must return to the roots of effective advertising, which is the creation of excellent ad creative. Marketers will need to prioritize buyer research, copywriting, visual design, and video production in their ad creative in 2022.
To understand their target consumers, they’ll need to start with excellent research.
- What is it that drives them?
- What are the impediments to them taking action?
- What factors influence the purchase process?
- Developing content that resonates and persuades will require answers to these issues.
Take your time when it comes to good ad creativity. We see far too many marketers rushing to create new ads or refresh old ones. First and foremost, good creativity needs time.
Understanding whether or not ad creative is effective takes time as well. Review, evaluate, and implement comments from internal creative evaluations instead of making spur-of-the-moment modifications. With the aid of your analytics team, identify winners and losers and build up ongoing feedback loops that serve as quality assurance.
- You require a Persuasive Offer
Even yet, if your offer is weak, your ad design will only go you so far. You must have a decent offer and it must be evaluated and assessed on a regular basis for advertising to function.
You can’t afford to keep using the same ad copy and offer for months on end—it’ll never succeed. Seasonality, audience tiredness, and other factors will eventually cause the numbers to decline.
People’s wants and preferences are rapidly changing these days. Client information and signals, as well as performance statistics, fall under this category.
These being said, I will like to put you through some pro tips on how to increase the performance of your Facebook Ads
Building audiences that adhere to Facebook Ads’ revised criteria and make advantage of the platform’s new targeting options can aid in the achievement of campaign objectives. Take a few extra measures to ensure you’re seeding and utilizing these audiences efficiently to boost your chances of success.
Follow closely while we take you through some steps.
Verify your Domain
Begin by confirming your domain to ensure that you, your company, and your website are all connected. This step also allows you to configure conversion events in your Business Manager account. To validate your domain, go to the Brand Safety option in your Business Manager settings and choose Domains.
To add a new domain, click the blue Add button and follow the instructions for validating it. Once you’ve completed the process, the domain will show a green Verified status.
Configure Conversion Events That Are Prioritized
To set and prioritize conversion events, go to Events Manager. Up to eight events may be configured and prioritized in Facebook Ads, all of which can be used to target and report on iOS 14.5 users. You can also design campaigns around events that aren’t prioritized, but they won’t reach iOS 14.5 users. Select the pixel you wish to adjust in Events Manager and go to the Aggregated Event Measurement tab. To get started, click the blue Configure Web Events button, then the green Add Event button to begin customizing. Select normal events from the drop-down menu, then drag and drop them into priority order. The most important event for your campaign goals should be at the top.
Audiences for Facebook Ads should be split-tested.
You may have had a dependable audience development and campaign generation methodology before July 2021 that didn’t need significant testing. Given the numerous recent and impending changes to Facebook Advertisements, it’s more crucial than ever to think about experimenting with alternative targeting choices or comparing ads. The built-in A/B testing feature in Ads Manager makes it simple to explore. Open Ads Manager and click the gray A/B Test icon to get started. Select Audience from the Variable drop-down menu for the campaign and ad set you wish to test.
Then decide on the length of the exam and the measure you’ll use to identify the winner. Ads Manager will clone the campaign and run it alongside the original when you submit the A/B test. Once you’ve figured out which audience is the most responding, you may cease running the losing campaign and apply what you’ve learned to future efforts to improve audience targeting.
Facebook ads targeting and Privacy updates
Due to the current privacy constraints of mobile devices, Facebook has had to limit the capabilities of some of its most profitable targeting choices on its advertising platform. In July 2021, Facebook began implementing improvements to advertisers’ targeting, tracking, and reporting capabilities.
We will put you through some ways to tackle audience related issues for Facebook ads.
How to Make Facebook Ads Saved Audiences
In July 2021, Facebook discontinued the maintenance of its famous Audience Insights feature. Fortunately, the ad platform now includes several new tools for creating stored audiences.
Facebook Insights
Do you want to obtain a deeper understanding of your present audience before attempting to attract new clients to your page? Open Audience Insights for your page in the Facebook Business Suite. You may look at the Current Audience page to get basic demographics about your current audience, such as their age, gender, and top locations.
Building Custom Audiences for Facebook
The sorts of data sources you may use to create bespoke audiences haven’t changed much in Facebook Ads yet. However, privacy-related improvements have changed the way the platform populates many of these retargeting audiences, as well as the recommended practices for creating them.
- Web-App Based Audiences
You may establish bespoke audiences based on web data or app activity to reach people who have visited your website or downloaded your mobile app. However, building audiences based on website behavior may prevent you from tracking iOS 14.5 users.
There is, however, a workaround. You can create custom audiences of users who have completed one of your conversion events if you’ve installed the Facebook pixel or SDK and set up conversion events in Facebook Events Manager. People who have signed up for a trial or added an item to their shopping cart, for example, can be retargeted.
Create or update your conversion event–based on custom audiences for retargeting at least a few days before you plan to begin your campaign if you plan to use them for remarketing. You may add your anticipated audience size to your ad set to see the predicted reach and performance once it has updated from pending.
- 3rd Party Data-Based Audiences
You may have a client list that you may utilize for remarketing if you use an email or SMS marketing platform or a customer relationship management (CRM) solution. When you post it to Facebook Ads, the technology matches it to appropriate Facebook users, allowing you to remarket to your existing clients.
Although this technique used to be quite painless, it now necessitates an extra step to comply with iOS 14.5 privacy standards. Updates to Apple’s Identifier for Advertisers (IDFA) might reduce Facebook’s Mobile Advertiser ID match rate.
- Facebook Activity Based Audiences
Those that rely on Facebook’s data sources have seen the least change out of all the bespoke audience alternatives. That’s because the iOS 14.5 privacy enhancements are focused on third-party monitoring and data sharing, rather than data collected by Facebook within its own app.
The attributes listed below can be used to create bespoke audiences.
- Take a look at any or all of the videos you’ve shared on Facebook.
- Fill out a lead form that you created for an advertising campaign.
- Use an Instant Experience you created for an ad campaign to interact with it.
- Any product in your Facebook store may be viewed, saved, or purchased.
- Participated in, attended, or bought a ticket to an event you hosted.
- Your Facebook page may be followed, messaged, or engaged with.
In some cases, you can make lookalike audiences. Stay tuned as we take you through some of the ones we have identified.
Retired Lookalike Audiences
Advertisers could previously use Facebook Ads to build lookalike audiences based on their geography. This audience category no longer has built-in location targeting on the platform. Instead, geotargeting may only be added to an ad set during campaign creation.
If you’re using one of these pre-existing lookalike audiences in a campaign, you may keep using it as long as the campaign is live. However, you won’t be able to build new ad campaigns with these out-of-date audiences.
These audiences were immediately decommissioned by the Facebook Ads platform, and new copies were produced without geotargeting. You can check which audiences have been discontinued and find their replacements in Ads Manager’s Audiences page. Take the effort to implement geographical targeting at the ad set level to employ these audiences effectively in subsequent campaigns.
- New Lookalike Audiences
You may pick a custom audience or your Facebook page as the data source when creating a new lookalike audience. If you employ a site or app-based custom audience data source, your seed audience is likely to be smaller than typical, as Facebook does not monitor individuals who have opted out.
Although the total number of your lookalike audience will remain the same, it’s crucial to note that changes to the data source may have an impact on the mix of your audience. You may construct numerous distinct audiences of differing sizes to discover what works best for your business and measure any potential influence on your new lookalike audiences.
Facebook Ads now suggests establishing lookalike audiences using value-based data sources for best results. You may construct a value-based lookalike audience if your Facebook pixel detects activities with monetary worth, such as eCommerce transactions.
It’s also worth noting that, in some cases, Facebook Ads may show your ad to people who aren’t in your lookalike audience. If you optimize for a value, app, or conversion event, the platform may broaden targeting if you’re likely to receive more conversions.
Conclusion
It is pertinent to know that there is a shift in the technology sphere of reaching customers as there are now more and more channels of passing information about your business to your target audience.
Your Facebook ad campaigns may require additional manual tweaks and optimizations in the near future. You’ll have a far higher chance of attaining the outcomes you want if you plan properly, listen to the platform’s advice, and keep a close eye on campaign results. I hope this piece has inspired you to think about fresh targeting options for your next campaign.
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