We break down how these latest updates will impact how marketers use the platform
Facebook received a considerable amount of backlash from advertisers in 2018 following the Cambridge Analytica scandal. Many major corporations and other businesses threatened to pull their campaigns from the platform, concerned that Facebook’s data practices were putting users at risk.
This was particularly unnerving for advertisers since the more users began to become suspicious of Facebook’s conduct, the more they turned to other social media platforms, decreasing the efficacy of running Facebook ads.
As the pressure intensified, Facebook was forced to reevaluate it’s advertising system— and fast.
This recently announced update is their attempt to remedy the challenges they faced last year. The changes will provide advertisers with more transparent and accurate information about how their campaigns are performing, and give them more control over where their ads appear.
But when it comes to user security— well, that issue has yet to be addressed.
Just this month, millions of Instagram passwords were left unprotected on a Facebook server, where employees and hackers could access them at their discretion.
For now, both users and advertisers can only hope that these security issues will be resolved in the near future. But for the purposes of this article, we’ll be focusing on the advertising updates and how they will benefit businesses who promote their products and services on the social media giant’s platform.
The End of the Relevance Score
Facebook’s relevancy score was created as a means of allowing advertisers to determine how fitting their ads were to their target audience. Unfortunately, however, the metric left a lot of advertisers perplexed, as it was unclear exactly how the social media platform actually calculated ad relevancy.
Marketers considered this one of the many strikes against Facebook marketing, and saw it as an indication that the platform’s influence may not be as evident as it seemed.
Thus, Facebook has decided to replace its relevance score with three other, more accurate metrics that advertisers can use to gauge their ad performance:
1. QUALITY RANKING
Quality ranking is a metric that informs the advertiser how likely their ads are to be perceived positively by their target audience.
2. ENGAGEMENT RATE RANKING
This metric is designed to let advertisers know how much engagement they can expect from a specific ad, and also compares the ad to the ads of major competitors.
3. CONVERSION RATE RANKING
This metric notifies advertisers of the number of conversions they can expect from a specific ad and compares the ad’s performance to that of competing ads within the same niche.
It is Facebook’s belief that these measurement tools will provide more precise estimations to businesses advertising on the platform.
Stricter Targeting Options
With their latest upgrades, Facebook is also tackling the issue of discrimination via advertising.
Many individuals and organizations have criticized the platform for allowing businesses and corporations to target low-income persons, as well as people of a specific ethnicity, sexual orientation or religion.
This becomes particularly concerning when businesses like high-interest credit card companies try to target low-income individuals with poor credit, or when employers run ads for job positions but opt not to advertise to people of a specific race.
Facebook wants to prevent its targeting options from being used to exclude particular communities or demographics, so they’ve decided to remove many of these targeting options on ads for housing, employment, and credit.
How Advertisers Can Make the Most of These Updates
It goes without saying that every business wants their ads to be as relevant as possible. They also want them to be seen by the maximum number of target audience members. So what can they do to reach these goals?
Here are a few ways advertisers can enhance the performance of their campaigns:
1. DON’T OVERSATURATE
Many businesses make the mistake of blasting their target audiences with their ads, having them appear as many times as possible, not realizing that this often works against them rather than for them.
If your target audiences members become inundated with ads for your products or services, they may get annoyed and “hide” your ads, which lowers your quality ranking and hinders the performance of your ads.
Thus, try to set your ads on a balanced schedule, and set a maximum number of appearances per user per day. This will prevent your ideal customers from feeling bombarded with your promotions.
2. INVEST IN HIGH-QUALITY IMAGERY
There are a plethora of high-quality, free stock photo sites on the internet today that businesses can take advantage of, no matter how big or small their budget may be.
PikWizard, for example, has a library of more than 30,000 copyright-free images— all of which are available at absolutely no cost.
There are also a ton of online graphic design tools that make creating your own captivating, custom images a breeze.
Additionally, if you really want to outshine your competition, you can try filming a video for your ad, since marketers who use video grow revenue 49% faster than non-video users.
3. SPLIT-TEST YOUR ADS
The only way to know for sure which ads resonate most with your target audience is to test, test, and then test again. By giving your ideal customers multiple options, you can measure which ads receive the most engagement, and then put additional funds behind the top-performing versions.
With marketing, it really is a game of trial and error sometimes. You have to throw the proverbial spaghetti at the wall and see what sticks!
The more you split-test your ads, the more solid data you will have to guide your ad creative— eliminating guesswork and improving your conversion rates.
About the author
Ellan Dineen is the Marketing Associate at Design Wizard. When she’s not hard at work in the Marketing Department, Ellan can be found en route to foreign lands with a book in her hand and a podcast in her ear. With a Master’s in English and Diploma in Social Media Marketing, she knows the importance of staying up-to-date with the industry’s latest trends and insights and is keen to pass these tips on to her readers.
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