Let’s talk about Bid Type. When you set ad targeting, the last major step you need to take is to set a bid type – your ad’s reason for being. Will your ad be aimed at getting the most possible clicks (likely to a highly-targeted audience) or the most possible impressions? If you’ve been advertising on Facebook for a long time (our in-house experts informally say about 6 months is enough) you should know how your audience reacts to your content.
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When that’s the case, it’s smart to set your bid type to Absolute oCPM, which distributes your spend among actions, social impressions, clicks, and reach. Over the last year, marketers started putting more money into this option, getting away from the more general CPC bid type.
This would seem to show that marketers are getting more seasoned and more confident in their ads’ effectiveness. Think of oCPM as a top-of-the-line guitar – if you’re inexperienced, it won’t make a difference if you use that or a just-okay option. But when you know what you’re doing, it takes your performance to a new level.
Conversions are all the rage
Another interesting trend has popped up in Ad Objectives. This quarter, Website Conversions became the most-chosen option as Page Likes continued to decline.
While some advertisers are wary of Website Conversions because of their relatively high-risk, high-reward angle, it seems that the same marketers who are getting more confident in their spend distribution are also more sure of their content. The Mobile App Installs choice has also risen steadily over the last year, as have Video Views.
But for Video Views to really gain steam, companies need to perfect the process of making Facebook videos. Native Facebook videos are totally different animals than those on other networks – for each network, there are different ways to succeed with video. We expect that marketers will start seeking Video Views more frequently when brands set up workflows to get them produced at scale.
That hasn’t stopped spend on Video Views from rising, though. Much of this is likely due to the effectiveness of video posts – even though they’re still not so common (in relative terms), they get great reach and engagement – so it makes sense that marketers push their best video content as much as possible.
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