Meta Media Buying in 2024 - A Guide To Campaign Options
Meta now offers an abundance of different options - from ABO to CBO, ASC, to DABA and Web Shop campaigns - you are not alone if you are feeling confused. Even with eComm, where we mostly select the ‘sales’ objective, there are tonnes of different ways to set up your campaigns.
Here we are going to break it all down and give you a summary of each - along with what we think it is best used for in eComm in 2024.
Manual Ad-Set Budget Optimisation AKA: ABO
This option is when you set your budget at the ad-set level and place a number of ads in the ad set. You manually adjust the budget based on performance.
What ABO is good for:
When you want full control or need to isolate variables
If you don’t have a tonne of creatives to test
When you have a simple campaign to launch (eg. sale)
When you have time to adjust bids and monitor
ABO Tips
Only exclude buyers
Test retargeting but if it doesn’t perform don’t continue
Stay broad
Superlookalikes
Totally broad
Interest stacks
At least two to three ads per ad set.
Maximum 5 ads live (budget dependent)
Can segment creative by theme - eg ‘sustainable angle’ vs ‘cost saving angle’
Campaign Budget Optimisation AKA - CBO
CBO is when you set the budget at the campaign level, and allow Meta to allocate the budget to whichever ad-set is performing best. It’s more automated than ABO.
What is CBO Good for?
Great for testing lots of creatives
Automated approach lets the algorithm think for you
Requires a bit more data than ABO to optimise
CBO Tips
Segment creative by theme
Budget needs to be enough for 2X conversions per day per ad-set
Ideally 3 ad-sets per Campaign
Be patient - run things for 7 days at least
Turn off ad-sets if they are below target or account benchmarks
If ad-sets do not spend turn them off. Or make a decision (using any data you have) on whether you want to use a minimum budget to force spend.
Add new creative tests in a new ad set.
Advantage Plus Shopping Campaigns - ASC
Advantage Plus is highly automated algorithmic media-buying - similar to Performance Max from Google
What is ASC Good For?
Generally better for more mature accounts with more data
Allows full-funnel marketing - prospecting and retargeting
Requires a lot of diverse creative
Cons
Can lean heavily into warm audiences
Can be expensive to ‘get off the ground’
Tips
Works best with diverse creative types and a high number of creatives
Start with at least 5 to 10 creatives
Limit the existing customer targeting using the ‘existing customer cap’ (recommend 10%)
Give it enough time to optimise - it can take a few weeks to perform
Ensure it has enough budget - 3-4X target CPA
Scaling tips:
Create additional ASC campaigns with different creative formats, product groupings or target customer.
Scale by testing both (Website (only) & Website + Shops) ASC campaigns against (and alongside) each other.
Separate catalogue campaigns from standard creative campaigns and run them alongside each other. Add budget based on performance.
Consider horizontally scaling through more ASC campaigns without the top spending ads in there - if you have one particular ad that is really hogging the spend, this can be a great approach. This will allow you to truly test the creative.
You can continue to add new creative to your live campaigns to enhance performance and potential for scale
Dynamic Ads for Broad Audiences AKA -DABA
‘Dynamic Ads for Broad Audiences’ feed your catalogue into Meta who show products to people based on their search behaviour
What is DABA Good for?
These are pure ‘shopping’ campaigns
Great for testing product fit on Meta when you have a lot of SKUs/Products
Great for fashion, jewellery, accessories, interior brands.
DABA Tips
Make sure you give each ad-set enough budget (3X CPA) and enough time (at least two weeks) to optimise.
Other ideas to set them up more effectively:
exclude low-priced products and gift cards from your catalogue or product set, FB May over-serve these products as they have a higher conversion rate but can acquire a lower quality customer.
target specific customers by segmenting your product set by price, product type, 'pairs well with X', or any other catalogue metadata you have.
use a feed customisation platform like Socioh to add catalogue data to your images (think price strikethrough overlays or background colours)
use a platform like https://www.datafeedwatch.com/ (acquired by Cart.com) to replace fields in your catalogue to make it more user-friendly OR change your product image (think lifestyle image rather than a white cut-out eComm image)
test different ad formats (just because it’s a catalogue ad doesn’t mean it needs to be boring!) Try collection ads with images, videos, text overlays, images + reviews etc).
Web+ Shops Campaigns
This is a ‘format’ where you set the ad destination as both your Meta/Instagram Shop and your website. Conversion location = website + shop (need to turn off if you don’t want it)
What is Web+ Shop Good for?
Great if you have a well optimised shop on Meta
Ability to tag products in ads
Tends to focus on existing customers
Cons
Can make it harder to sync with Klaviyo
Need to monitor your product feeds well
Only do it if you are ready to monitor closely as it tends to be buggy
Web+ Shop Tips
Start by revisiting your top 3-4 historically successful ads and recreate them within a web+shop campaign using the Advantage Plus setting. Tag the products in both feeds and stories. Leave these campaigns running for 4-5 days or until they exit the learning phase.
Remove low Average Order Value (AOV) products from Meta Shops. If lower AOV products are featured on your homepage, Meta's optimisation may shift in that direction.
Create product sets and promote them through ads. One effective strategy is building a high AOV best sellers collection page in your catalogue and integrating it into Meta Shops. All ads should direct traffic to this page
Regularly monitor the user experience and user interface, which currently require significant improvement. Check your Commerce Manager daily to ensure there are no rejections; this is crucial. Treat your shop like you would your website and make sure everything is working smoothly.
Be sure to tag your products in ads, as this is possible on most placements. Our recommended approach is tagging top-selling items along with the product being promoted in the ad. You can include up to four tags per post.
If you're new to Meta, keep an eye out as they may offer financial incentives for testing, even without a dedicated representative attached to your brand
BONUS: Hire a few creators or influencers to tag your products on Instagram, especially for Black Friday and Cyber Monday promotions. This has shown recent success.
Cost Controlled Campaigns - Cost Cap and Bid Cap.
This tends to be more of an advanced media-buying approach, and while it appears simple, it can be hard to get it right. When it works though, it is a great way to have your campaigns ‘on autopilot’ with little intervention needed apart from new creative.
Bid Caps
Bid caps are actual ‘hard caps’ and cost caps are ‘average’ caps. With Bid Caps, your CPA will very likely not go over and Meta will not spend if it doesn’t think it will achieve your cap. Bid caps fail to start or stop very aggressively for this reason. It’s not flexible.
Bid cap is a limit applied to the bid per estimated conversion (the event selected as the optimization goal), rather than realized conversion. It won't allow you to enter ad auctions that it predicts will exceed your set bid. Predictions aren't perfect.
ROAS Goal can also be used
Cost Caps
CPRG/Cost Cap bidding treats the target as a goal, rather than a hard cap. Based on averages over time, you will see some fluctuations in smaller windows (hourly or day-to-day) but over larger windows (7+ days) you will generally have the CPA at your cap, if the system works.
Cost caps aim to keep costs at or below the goal. However, it allows the system to exceed the cap to maintain consistent ad delivery, increase conversions, and ultimately return to the target cost goal over time.
When to use Cost Controlled Settings
When scaling it adds scale with no downside
Sits alongside core campaigns
Although some media buyers suggest having an ‘all cost-cap’ campaign - this is not something we advocate.
We suggest this can fit in with your other campaigns and would only take over your entire strategy if you saw very strong evidence that this could work long-term. Again - it’s another element to test.
Summary
So - there you have a quick tour of the many media-buying options you still have inside Meta - one day, we think it will all be automated, but for now, you have a lot of different elements you can test!
