Why does this happen?
When I use Advantage+ Audience without audience suggestions, the result is Meta spends about 35% of my budget on remarketing to my audience.
When I provide audience suggestions using custom audiences that match my segments, the result is 32% of my budget is spent on these groups.
I was determined to find out what that meant—if anything.
Taken individually: Encouragement
I was initially confused by these results. Taken individually, these results are encouraging.
In fact, Meta spends 35% of my budget on remarketing, which is an incredible discovery. It greatly increased my confidence in taking this approach. I understand why advertisers might not trust a hands-off approach, but this proves it’s exactly what we want.
And it’s great to see that Meta spent 32% reaching the audience I provided as a recommendation before promoting it more broadly. After all, that’s how Meta says it’s supposed to work.
question
While this is all great, the fact that more people are being contacted without advice gives me pause.
Is it possible that these recommendations were mostly ignored, but that they were implemented anyway? Did the advice I gave actually have a negative impact on my ability to reach these people? It’s only a 3% difference, but it’s still a difference.
Other findings
First, when I don’t provide advice, leads get five dollars less CPM. This could be random, or it could be by design. By not providing recommendations, it may give the algorithm more freedom, thereby reducing CPM costs.
Second, I should note that the percentage of impressions dedicated to remarketing actually changes in the opposite direction.
When I didn’t provide suggestions, 23.7% of impressions went to my audience.
When I did it it was 29%.
There’s also a bit of fun with numbers. Flipping occurs, at least in part, because of the ability to reach potential audiences at a higher cost-per-thousand impressions (CPM) when delivering recommendations.
Regardless, there is little difference between these suggestions, which is the most important takeaway. Why?
my thoughts
The fact that the recommendations didn’t seem to have any positive impact may be because I have an established ad account with pixel, conversion, and ad engagement history. Since I’m optimizing for conversion events, Meta has a lot of history to draw on when assembling an initial target audience for me. In this case, the advice is unnecessary (or so it seems).
On the other hand, suggestions may be most useful when no history exists. New ad accounts, new pixels, or sites generating minimal activity may be at a disadvantage. Meta may need some help getting started.
Obviously, my test results are still a drop in the bucket. You never want to do an in-depth study with a small sample size. When I do or don’t provide advice, there’s always the possibility that I’ll see something different at future events.
But these preliminary findings are certainly interesting and worthy of attention.
