Everything you Need to Know About Meta Shop Campaigns
What are Meta Shop Ads?
Shop Ads are a relatively new ad ‘format’ - released in the US in the second half of 2022, but recently being given more of a focus by Meta and seeing good results.
In a nutshell the format allows Meta to send paid ad traffic to your Facebook Shop or through Instagram checkout rather than to your website. It gives the algorithm the ability to send your traffic to your Facebook shop when it thinks that a unique user is more likely to convert on one of their platforms rather than your eComm store.
If customers end up in your shop, they can easily check out right on Facebook or Instagram - and you have less iOS data loss as they haven’t left the Meta platform.
According to Meta - In a recent test, businesses found that using the Website and shop option in their ads (Shops ads) gave them 30% more return on ad spend compared to using only the website option. (Source)
The tests that we have run at Webtopia have shown generally on average a lower cost per purchase and a lower CPM and ATC rate, suggesting that either Meta is giving preference to these campaign types or that the algorithm performs better with this flexibility. We often see relatively ‘new’ campaign types like this perform better for early movers.
Things to be aware of
Quick tip: If you use Shopify, it's pretty easy to create shops on Facebook and Instagram and use this format of Shops ads to show off and sell your products.
We at Webtopia advise you to activate the Meta Shop via Commerce Manager, sync the catalog, and test it with a campaign directing users to both the website and shop for optimal results.
The interface can be extremely buggy and unreliable so be prepared to check your shop regularly (daily) for any issues - for instance products incorrectly marked out of stock.
Remember to factor in the standard fees of 2.9% for Meta Pay users.
NOTE: The website and shop conversion location is currently only available to US advertisers selecting an audience in the US.
Tips from our team and colleagues in the industry
Tag your products in ads. Most placements now allow this. You can add up to four tags per ad, so you can tag other products outside the one you are promoting (eg. best-sellers)
Create product sets and advertise these product sets. Build higher AOV best sellers collection page in your catalogue and use that in Meta Shops.
Remove any any low AOV products from Meta Shops. If you run to the home page of your shop and feature lower AOV products you risk Meta focussing on these low-cost ‘easy wins’
Campaigns can be run to ‘Custom Audiences’ of people who visited your shop - the benefit being that the data is fully owned by Meta so the data quality is better. We have found longer lookback windows work better with this ad format.
Using influencers? Make sure to have them tag your products on Instagram - this will help build your audiences and increase the quality of data
Testing idea from https://twitter.com/herrmanndigital
“When just getting started, pull up your top 3-4 posts all time and recreate them in a web+shop campaign on Advantage Plus setting. Tag the products in feeds / stories. Leave for 4-5 days (or until out of the learning phase). I hope this helps! Like I said, Meta Shops setting up will tear your hair out. The system was not designed to be user-friendly AT ALL…. These ads are the best right now and I highly recommend you test.” - David Herrmann
How To Create Meta Shop Ads
Preparation
Before you get started, make sure you have a few things ready to create a Sales objective ad using the Website and shop conversion location:
Have a shop with Checkout on Facebook and Instagram.
Connect your Facebook Page or Instagram account to your shop, and make sure you have at least advertiser permissions.
Connect a catalogue to the commerce account you want to advertise for, and again, you'll need at least advertiser permissions.
Make sure your catalogue is linked to a Meta pixel.
Have an ad account set up with at least advertiser permissions.
Step By Step
Open Ads Manager.
Click "Create" on the top left.
Under Objective, choose "Sales" and click "Continue."
You can either choose "Advantage+ shopping campaign" for automated setup or "Manual sales campaign" for manual setup. Click "Next."
(For manual sales campaigns only) Enter your campaign details and click "Next."
At the ad set level, choose "Website and shop" as your conversion location. You can pick your commerce account and pixel below.
(For manual sales campaigns only) If you turned on Catalogue at the campaign level, you can tick the box to help improve your ad performance for promoted products.
Review and edit settings like budget, schedule, placements, and audience. Click "Next."
On the ad level, under Identity, select the Facebook Page or Instagram account linked to your Commerce Manager account.
Choose your ad creative.
If creating an Advantage+ shopping campaign:
Click "Catalogue" to automatically create personalized ad creative from your catalogue.
Or, click "Manual upload" to upload your own creative.
If creating a manual sales campaign:
Click "Catalogue" to use creative from your catalogue.
You can turn on Advantage+ creative to automatically generate personalized ad creative.
Choose "Manual upload" to upload your own creative.
Select your destination.
Enter your website URL and, if you choose, a display link.
Check that the correct shop is listed.
Under Shop destination, choose where you want to send people (product pages, collections, or home page). This should match the website URL you chose.
Click "Publish."
Your ad will be published after review. If there are technical issues with your shop, the traffic may be sent to your website instead.
Remember, not all features are currently available for Shops ads. If you choose an unsupported feature or setting, your ad will only send traffic to your website.
Don’t forget, our team are here to help accelerate your eCommerce business with Facebook, Google, TikTok and Pinterest ads and Klaviyo email marketing.
Let’s chat about your business and goals - email us on hello@webtopia.co
