This NEW Meta Ads Update Changes Everything Forever!

Summary

Meta has introduced exciting updates to their ad platform, significantly enhancing optimization capabilities for advertisers. In this video, Ollie from Strand Media discusses these new features, including the ability to optimize for profit and predicted lifetime value, and support for new attribution models to improve incremental conversions. Ollie explains how these changes can lead to better ad performance and more efficient allocation of ad spend. He also highlights the integration of third-party analytics tools, which promises improved tracking accuracy and campaign optimization. Stay tuned for practical insights and testing results on these updates.

Takeaways

• 🚀 Meta's new ad platform updates aim to improve advertiser performance significantly.
• 🔧 The update allows advertisers to optimize for both profit and predicted lifetime value (LTV), beyond just conversion volume and value.
• 💡 Businesses can now target customers based on the best margin products or highest profitability rather than just high average order values (AOV).
• 💰 Optimizing for customer lifetime value means focusing on long-term profitability rather than immediate, low-ticket purchases.
• 🎯 Meta will introduce 'conversion value rules' that allow advertisers to define what specific outcomes they want to optimize for, aligning more closely with business objectives.
• 📈 A new attribution model helps advertisers optimize for 'incremental conversions,' which are conversions that only occur due to exposure to ads.
• 🔄 This update enhances ad spend efficiency by better allocating ad dollars between top, middle, and bottom funnel campaigns, based on conversion lift experiments.
• 📊 Businesses that have run conversion lift studies could see an average improvement of 20% in incremental conversions due to the new update.
• 🔗 Meta's AI models will soon integrate with third-party analytics tools to fine-tune campaign optimization by analyzing the entire customer journey.
• 📈 Advertisers saw a 30% improvement in meta-attributed conversions when using third-party analytics integration, making tracking more accurate and optimizing campaigns more effectively.

Q & A

What is the main focus of the video?

The video focuses on recent updates to Meta's ad platform, highlighting key features and how they could positively impact advertisers' performance.

What new optimization options are being introduced by Meta's update?

Meta is introducing the ability to optimize for profit and predicted lifetime value, in addition to the existing options of optimizing for volume and value of conversions.

Why is the ability to optimize for profit important for businesses?

Optimizing for profit allows businesses to target customers who purchase products with the highest margins, leading to higher overall profitability.

How does optimizing for predicted lifetime value benefit advertisers?

Optimizing for predicted lifetime value enables advertisers to target customers who are likely to make repeat purchases, even if their initial order is not highly profitable, thus increasing long-term value.

What is the significance of 'conversion value rules' in Meta's new update?

Conversion value rules allow advertisers to define specific business objectives, such as profit or lifetime value, and align their ad campaigns accordingly for more effective results.

What are 'incremental conversions,' and why are they important in advertising?

Incremental conversions are conversions that would not have occurred without the ad exposure. This metric is crucial because it helps advertisers focus on the touchpoints that truly drive sales, making their ad spend more efficient.

How will Meta's new attribution models improve ad performance?

Meta's new attribution models will allow advertisers to allocate budget more effectively by optimizing for campaigns and ads that lead to incremental conversions, improving overall efficiency and reducing wasted ad spend.

What challenges do advertisers face with multiple marketing touchpoints, and how does this update help?

Advertisers often struggle to attribute conversions accurately across different platforms. Meta's new update aims to solve this by optimizing ad spend based on incremental conversions, clarifying which campaigns contribute most to conversions.

Why is the integration of third-party analytics tools with Meta ads potentially valuable?

The integration of third-party analytics tools with Meta ads allows for more accurate tracking of customer journeys and ad performance, which can lead to better optimization of campaigns and more precise cost control strategies.

How have Meta’s experiments with these new features impacted businesses so far?

In tests conducted by Meta, advertisers saw an average improvement of over 20% in incremental conversions and a 30% increase in Meta-attributed conversions when using third-party analytics tools, demonstrating significant potential gains in performance.

Outlines

00:00

🚀 Meta's Exciting Ad Platform Update

Meta recently launched significant upgrades to its ad platform, with promising potential for advertisers. These updates are expected to boost performance, allowing advertisers to optimize not only for conversion volume but also for profit and predicted lifetime value. Advertisers can now target customers who offer the best margins, aligning Meta ads with business objectives. Ollie, a performance marketer, shares his excitement and anticipates testing these updates with clients.

05:02

📈 Understanding Incremental Conversions for Ad Efficiency

The next update introduces support for new attribution models, focusing on incremental conversions—sales that only occur because of an ad. Ollie explains the challenge of determining which platform drives conversions when using multiple advertising channels, such as Facebook and Google. The update will allow advertisers to better allocate ad spend to campaigns that truly drive incremental conversions, leading to more efficient use of the budget and smarter optimization of top, middle, and bottom-funnel campaigns.

10:05

🔗 Integrating Third-Party Analytics with Meta Ads

Meta will now allow integration with third-party analytics tools, improving campaign optimization. This is especially useful for advertisers using cost-control strategies like bid caps, where accurate reporting is critical. By feeding correct data directly into Meta's ad manager, advertisers can ensure more efficient spending and optimize their campaigns based on accurate tracking from external analytics. Meta's AI will leverage this data to optimize ad placements, potentially increasing costs but improving targeting accuracy.

Keywords

💡Meta Ad Platform

The Meta Ad Platform is the system provided by Meta (formerly Facebook) that allows businesses to create, manage, and optimize ads across its network. In the video, the speaker discusses new updates to this platform, which are designed to improve how advertisers can optimize their campaigns, aligning ad spend more closely with business goals like profit or customer lifetime value.

💡Conversion Value Rules

Conversion Value Rules are a new feature in Meta’s ad platform that allows advertisers to define the value of conversions beyond simple volume or revenue. Advertisers can now optimize for profit or predicted lifetime value of customers. This is important for businesses that want to focus on high-margin products or long-term customer relationships, as discussed in the video.

💡Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)

Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) refers to the predicted revenue a business can expect from a customer over the entire duration of their relationship. In the video, this concept is key to the new Meta ad updates, as advertisers can now optimize for long-term value, not just short-term sales. For instance, a customer might make a low-value initial purchase but generate significant profits through repeat purchases.

💡Incremental Conversions

Incremental conversions refer to sales or conversions that occur only because of the ad being shown to a user. This concept is crucial in Meta's new attribution models, which allow advertisers to focus on the ads and campaigns that directly cause new conversions, rather than simply attributing credit to all ads shown. This helps advertisers avoid spending on ads that may not be contributing much to new sales.

💡Attribution Models

Attribution models are methods of determining which touchpoints in a customer’s journey should be credited for a conversion. Meta's new updates introduce support for incremental attribution, helping advertisers better understand which ads are truly driving new conversions. This is important because different advertising platforms often compete for credit, making it hard to allocate ad spend efficiently.

💡Conversion Lift Experiments

Conversion Lift Experiments are studies that measure the incremental impact of ads by comparing the behavior of users who saw the ads versus those who didn’t. The speaker explains that these experiments are useful for advertisers to identify where their ad dollars are most effectively spent. However, the experiments require a significant ad spend and historical data, making them more feasible for larger businesses.

💡Top of Funnel (TOF)

Top of Funnel (TOF) refers to the initial stage of the customer journey, where potential customers become aware of a brand. In the video, the speaker mentions that with new attribution models, more ad spend might be directed towards TOF campaigns because they drive awareness, which could lead to higher overall conversions when used effectively alongside middle and bottom funnel strategies.

💡Cost Control Bid Strategies

Cost control bid strategies in Meta ads are methods advertisers use to set limits on how much they’re willing to spend per conversion or click. The video highlights that by integrating third-party analytics tools with Meta ads, businesses can get more accurate data on their real costs, enabling more effective use of cost control strategies like cost-per-action (CPA) bidding.

💡CPM (Cost Per Mille)

CPM, or Cost Per Mille, refers to the cost of 1,000 ad impressions. In the context of the video, the speaker notes that CPMS may increase with the new updates, especially as advertisers bid more aggressively to target high-value customers identified through better tracking and analytics. Despite potentially higher CPMs, this should result in better long-term outcomes for businesses focusing on profitability and customer value.

💡Third-Party Analytics Integration

Third-Party Analytics Integration refers to the ability to connect external analytics tools with Meta’s ad platform for improved campaign tracking and optimization. The speaker highlights that this new capability can lead to better optimization of campaigns, especially for businesses that rely on cost control strategies or have more sophisticated attribution setups, allowing for more accurate data-driven decisions.

Highlights

Meta has introduced new updates to their ad platform with promising impacts on ad performance for advertisers.

One of the most interesting updates is the ability to define conversions based on business value, such as profit and predicted lifetime value.

Instead of optimizing only for the volume or value of conversions, advertisers can now optimize for profit and customer lifetime value, offering better alignment with business objectives.

The new feature, called 'Conversion Value Rules,' will allow advertisers to define objectives like profit margins or customer lifetime value and optimize accordingly.

This update allows advertisers to optimize not only for initial purchase value but for future recurring value, helping them align ad spend with long-term profitability.

Supporting new attribution models, advertisers will now be able to report and optimize for incremental conversions, which are conversions that wouldn't have happened without showing the ad.

The new attribution models will make it easier to allocate ad spend efficiently across different platforms by understanding which touchpoints drive conversions.

These updates will help advertisers better balance their ad spend across top, middle, and bottom funnel campaigns for more efficient results.

Advertisers who have been running 'conversion lift' experiments will benefit most from the new attribution model, as it measures the true impact of ads across multiple touchpoints.

Businesses running conversion lift studies have seen a 20% improvement in incremental conversions after using the new models in 2024.

Meta is allowing the integration of third-party analytics tools into Ads Manager, improving campaign optimization by understanding the entire customer journey.

Integrating third-party analytics tools will help resolve issues with inaccurate tracking, making cost-control bid strategies more effective.

Advertisers testing these updates have seen a 30% increase in Meta-attributed conversions, suggesting more accurate tracking and campaign optimization.

AI-driven optimization will likely increase CPMs as it prioritizes higher-value customers, which could lead to more competition for valuable audiences.

These updates are expected to improve ad efficiency and help advertisers better align their campaigns with long-term business objectives, like lifetime customer value and profitability.

Transcripts

so recently meta just launched a new

update that they are coming up with some

new upgrades to their ad platform and

some of these updates are really really

interesting and can have a big positive

impact on performance for advertisers so

in this video I'm going to go through

the different updates and talk through

what it means for us as advertisers and

also what we can kind of expect from

this and a little bit of my thoughts and

opinions on these updates so being said

this is a very very interesting update

and it will be extremely exciting to

start testing out some of this new stuff

when they roll it out into the ad

manager now if you are new to this

YouTube channel my name is Ollie I run

strand media a performance marketing

agency we work with e-commerce and info

product businesses and help them scale

profitably with ads on meta over the

last five plus years I've managed over

multiple seven figures in ad span and

for businesses all over the world as

well so a lot of experience this YouTube

channel is just where I share the

lessons and learnings that I have along

the way as I'm helping more and more

businesses get better results for their

ads so let's get into this article so

the first thing of the article which I

found the most interesting is this part

right here so I've just screenshotted

part of the article and added it in here

and underlying the most interesting

stuff uh that I found so this is very

interesting the title for this update is

defining the conversions business's

value most now I'm not going to read

through this part of the article but

what they simply are saying here is that

now instead of only being able to

optimize for either volume of

conversions so optimizing to get as many

conversions as you can and the other way

you can do it is optimize for the value

of conversions so you're optimizing for

you know the customers that have the

highest average order value you can now

Define the value part even further so as

they're saying here the new definitions

that you will be able to add is is

profit and prediced lifetime value so

instead of just optimizing for customers

that spend a lot in your store or have

high aov you will now be able to

optimize for profit which is what a lot

of businesses is the most important

thing right so the customers that buy

the products with the best margin and

the most amount of products with the

best margin that leaves you with the

best or the most amount of profit right

the other way you can set this up

eventually based on this up update here

is you can be optimizing for customer

lifetime value so this is super

interesting because this is something

that's not been possible until they will

roll this out so with this you can

basically then optimize not just based

on the first purchase value but on the

future reoccurring value from that

customer so some customers come in and

maybe they buy like a low ticket skew

maybe you have a product that's cheaper

than the rest and it's not really a

super profitable product for you but the

first order they kind of need to buy

this to build trust with your business

and then maybe you have a great upsell

system or cross sell system that gets

these people to come back because

they're happy with the first order even

though that first order wasn't like

anything super profitable or really high

value order maybe the next order because

of this first order product maybe the

next order has much higher value and

much higher margin and profitability on

it so still optimizing for this customer

will be aligned with your business

objectives and that's really interesting

you see how deep this can go and how

more alignment you can have between the

optimization on meta ads and what you

actually want as business objectives for

yourself so super super interesting

there so the feature that they will roll

out which will allow you to Define these

things will be called conversion value

rules and we still don't know how this

is going to look in specifically how

this is going to be set up but I guess

they will come up with a setup where you

can actually Define these objectives for

yourself and then optimize for what you

actually want which is very very

interesting and personally I'm super

looking forward to start testing this

with our clients as well and make sure

you subscribe because I will definitely

be sharing those lessons here on this

YouTube channel so also they added an

example so let's say you as an

Advertiser determined that a certain

part of your customer segment have a 30%

higher lifetime value then these

customers will be also more valuable to

you so you can also pay more to place

your ads in front of these compared to

cust customers with lower lifetime value

so yeah maybe your CPM is going to

increase by using this cuz you're now

you know bidding on some more high value

customers but setting this up correctly

long term should get you closer to your

ultimate business objectives so yeah

really interesting stuff here and again

I'm super looking forward to trying this

out so the next part is also really

really interesting the title of it is

supporting new attribution models again

I'm not going to R through it you can R

through the whole article to yourself

what this basically means is you will

now be able to report that and also

optimize for incremental conversions

what this means is an incremental

conversion is essentially just a

conversion that would not have happened

unless you actually showed your ad to

them so this might sound a little bit

technical or you might not fully

understand it let me give you an example

to to further explain this one big issue

in advertising when you have multiple

touch points in your marketing setup is

that some of your customer Journey might

have you know some bottom of funnel

Facebook ad campaigns bottom of funnel

Google ad campaigns and maybe have some

other platforms as well figuring out

which touch Point were the ones that

actually made a conversion is very

difficult because all of these

advertising platforms want credit for

the sale because if they get the credit

you're more likely to still spend money

on their platform right so there's

competition between Google and

competition between mea and also other

platforms so this makes it really hard

to understand where do you actually need

to spend your ad budget because you just

don't really know which of these

platforms are actually doing the heavy

lifting in making people convert so with

this new attribution model you will be

able to optimize so that you only

allocate your add dollars to the

campaigns adets and ads that improve

your incremental conversions so I think

when you start using this probably for a

lot of businesses more money is going to

flow into your top of all campaign

because you probably have some Google

bottom of funnel setup maybe you run

retargeting there as well and maybe

you're just you know spending

unnecessary amounts on bottom of photo

campaigns maybe a lot of these people

are you know adding to cart not

purchasing right away and then they see

some ads maybe they don't need to see

those ads before they convert maybe they

just need some more time to you know

complete the order and maybe you have

like email flows set up to automatically

remind them to complete their order when

they added to card and all that stuff so

maybe right now you're having a lot of

inefficient add doll being spent on

bottom of a and in that case with these

new attribution models that also

actually affect how the campaigns

optimize your add dollar might be moved

into things that are just going to

overall be more efficient for your

business now sure that might not mean

that all of the spend is now going to

top of funnel but I think over time the

allocation between you know top of

funnel middle of funnel and bottom of

funnel is going to become better overall

for your business now one thing I've

heard regarding this new up update is

that this will be most valuable for the

businesses that have been running

conversion lift experiments if you go

into the experiment section in your ads

manager you can actually run conversion

lift studies or conversion lift

experiments where you measure the

incremental impact of your meta ads

basically you just run a study to figure

out since you have multiple touch points

where you actually need to spend your

money and where it's actually a bit

unnecessary to place your add dollars

because it's not impact in your overall

sales so this is actually really hard to

do for most businesses to run a

conversal lift study you need a certain

requirement for ad spend I'm not going

to get too much into it I'll leave a

link in the description below if you

want to see if you can do a study like

this you have to spend a lot of money on

ads and you need a certain attribution

set up already and you need a lot of

historic data to be able to run this but

maybe for some businesses maybe you

might be able to run this in that case

you could definitely look into it

because when they roll this out this

could would be more beneficial for you

compared to somebody that never run

conversion lift study in the past now

really interesting here when they tested

this experiment this year actually so

2024 advertisers saw an average

Improvement of more than 20% in

incremental conversions so what that

means is they increased sales by 20%

that would not have been increased

unless people have seen ads on meta so

that that's really interesting there and

if that will be the case for a lot of

businesses then you know you will have

way more efficient allocation of your ad

dollars now this next update is also

interesting I'm just really Unsure how

valuable it actually will be from a

perspective of an Advertiser so this new

update would actually allow you to

integrate your Third Party Analytics

tool with meta ads which hasn't been

possible in the past now again I'm not

sure how much of an impact this will

actually have on performance but what

they are saying is that the AI models on

meta will be able to look at all the

different touch points in your marketing

setup to better understand your customer

journey and then help fine-tune the

campaign optimization based on that so

it's very hard to say like how much of

an impact this will have it will

probably you know be very different for

different businesses but one thing that

I think can be interesting with this is

you know one issue that we have had for

a lot of clients that have been using

the cost per ass goal or bid cap or cost

cap bid strategies so basically just any

cost control bid strategies when the

tracking isn't accurate so that means

the CPA or the Ros isn't accurate in the

reporting of meta but it is more

accurate in the triple wh or you know

any other Analytics tool the business

might use then using these bid

strategies you have to like take into

account the difference between what is

actually being reported in mea and what

the actual CPA is based on the backend

data so by integrating your Analytics

tool and you can get this correct data

directly into meta ads manager what I do

think and I'm not sure if this will be

the case but you should then be able to

use any cost control bid strategies more

effectively because it will not stop

spending if the CPA all of a sudden

looks you know way less than what it

actually is just because tracking is off

so that's one interesting thing there

and yeah it also does say that AI models

will optimize better when you integrate

with your third party tool but hard to

say right now but definitely will be

interesting to test when they roll this

out so again in this part of the article

they are talking about how this actually

did improve results for some of the

tests that they ran So based on their

experiment advertisers saw a 30% average

increase in their meta attributed

conversions as measured by the

thirdparty Analytics tool so if this is

actually a 30% increase in meta

conversions or just meta attributed

conversions like if it's just the

tracking being more accurate then of

course that doesn't necessarily have any

immediate impact on the optimization and

end result but still this is an

interesting update and will definitely

be call to test out they also do say

that when businesses are using this they

see a rise in cpms in some cases and

that I guess it's just normal because

when do you have better tracking and the

AI is better understands what customers

to focus on it will probably focus on

customers that are more high value and

in that case more businesses will then

compete for that target audience which

again then will increase the cpms so

that totally make sense there so as you

can see a lot of interesting updates

here I'm really excited about this

update and when when they roll it out we

will definitely start to test as much as

we can of this for our clients and then

all the lessons and learnings I make on

that I will definitely make a video

about on this channel so if you're

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