Click Through Reads #29: Facebook Accounts Disabled and Connected TV Strategy

Hello Click-Through-Readers! Were your Facebook accounts disabled this week? We cover the details of how Facebook accidentally disabled accounts and how it was fixed as one of our top stories. Hopefully that is the end of Facebook bugs since the holidays are right around the corner and it’s time to build! It’s going to be an unprecedented holiday season for digital with unknown gifting trends and demand.

Facebook Ads Glitches - Should We Test Other Channels Ahead of Cyber Week?

Facebook temporarily disabled many ad accounts Thursday evening. With Cyber Week right around the corner and many sales already well underway, this is rightfully causing some worries for e-commerce companies. 

In the event that another glitch like this happens during cyber week, we as advertisers should be prepared. You should be equipped with a new ads account in a separate business manager that can help you pick right back up where you started, but also begin testing other channels if you aren’t already. 

Pinterest and Snapchat are good options if you haven’t already ventured into these platforms. Don’t wait for another bug to happen, and begin building your campaigns out ahead of Cyber Week so that you are prepared. Depending on your budget, it is a great idea to run these in tandem with Facebook regardless. 

Connected TV strategies to capture New Year’s resolution shoppers

If you are in an industry that appeals to the “New Year, New You” mindset, then here are some CTV strategies to help be successful in capturing new customers in early 2021. With the shift to digital caused by COVID, 2020 has seen solid growth in Connected TV viewer adoption. According to research by Nielsen: 

• Total streaming TV viewing time has increased 74% year over year. 

• 25% of adults surveyed reported adding a new service in Q2 alone. 

With cold weather coming, even more people will be spending time indoors streaming for work, fitness, and entertainment. Reaching these customers through Connected TV ads gives you similar targeting options to Google and Facebook audiences including in-market, demographic, interest, shopping history, and geography. Layering in in-market audiences will help ensure a higher-quality site visitor. 

For prospecting creative, be sure to include a few elements to help the customer get to know your product. These include:

• Lifestyle Product Imagery. You not only want your audience to see what you have to offer, but also how it’ll make them feel. Incorporate lifestyle visuals of people enjoying your products.

• Persistent URL. Since CTV doesn’t allow viewers to click on an ad, you need to make sure your audience knows where to go. Include your URL, either along the bottom or in a corner, throughout the ad. 

• Commanding CTA. Include a visual and audible CTA to prompt viewers to take action.

Looking into retargeting for OTT/CTV is also an important part of any strategy. Looking into audiences things to consider are how often they visited the site, average time spent on site, time since last conversion, pages they visited, items they shopped for, and value of items added to the cart. 

For your retargeting video creative, we recommend a more direct approach since these shoppers have already visited your site and know your brand.  

• Get Aggressive.  These shoppers are lower down on the sales funnel now, so consider offering this group more aggressive promos to convince them to convert. 

• Focus on Your Offering. These shoppers already understand your brand, so make your product offering the focus.

Facebook is Now Offering Media Optimizations Option for Increased Engagement

When you upload media for your ad, you’ll now see recommended optimizations that may help improve ad performance. You have the option to individually opt in to some adjustments including cropping, contrast, or brightness improvements or you can allow additional adjustments. This option allows Facebook to make minor enhancements to your media depending on the creative and who it’s being shown too. Some optimizations will be shown to every person and others will be applied based on Facebook’s understanding of the user’s preference to improve performance. 

Drop Seen in Google Search Terms Report

Google moved to limit the amount of Search Queries it reports in September. A report was published this past week quantifying how much of a drop has been seen based on analysis of several large accounts.

• The share of US text ad spend attributed to Search Queries dropped from 98% in August to 74% in September.

• Mobile dropped from 96% to 75%

• Tablet dropped from 94% to 76%

It was noted that due to the fact that Google does not report search queries unless they have been viewed by a significant number of users, this change can possibly impact accounts dealing in smaller niche markets more. It was also found that cost/conversion of non-reported queries was much higher than those that were.

Tips for working with these changes and maintaining valuable negative keyword lists:

• Look to Auto Suggestions, People Also Ask and related searches 

• Utilize query reports in Microsoft Ads

Facebook & Instagram Shopping Updates

Instagram has begun testing shopping ads that will allow advertisers to tag the products in the image, making it easy for users to complete the purchase on their mobile device. Previously, these product tags were only allowed in organic posts that could then be boosted. Now these will eventually be available through Ads Manager.

This is especially important as Facebook recently announced they were seeing 78% of online purchases occurring on mobile and expect these numbers to increase during the holiday season.

Facebook has also rolled out new audience targeting options:

• Shopping engagement custom audiences: Advertisers will be able to “reach people who’ve already shown interest in their product or brand by doing things like saving a product, viewing a shop or initiating a purchase.”

• Shopping lookalike audiences: Find “shoppers that have similar interests to your existing shoppers.”