I love talking to entrepreneurs and business owners. A question I get all the time is, “Why is Facebook not working as well for our Brand anymore”?
Facebook is a complicated ecosystem, and so your mileage may vary depending on your brand vertical and the countries in which you advertise over. Let’s review the most common reasons we see:
#1 Facebook Ad Rates are up double digits
Most Facebook and Instagram media are bought via auction. As you can see below CPM’s have gone from $8.59 to $12.59 year to date. That is a 46% increase in nine months! What vendor would you just accept a 46% increase from?
But wait, I heard all these big brands were boycotting Facebook, so since it’s an auction, we should see rates going down. The problem is that these big brands make up less than 10% of the ad volume, so there has been little impact.
#2 Election year = CPM volatility
We are located in NH, and depending on which states you advertise in, there is a huge amount of money sloshing in and out of the Facebook platform on a daily basis. This makes it harder to get consistent results as we have been seeing $2-$4 swings in CPM’s in battleground states.
#3 Ad Creative burnout
We are all taught that more ad frequency is good and that is true to a point but with algorithms running more of our campaigns, we need to monitor this very closely.
This study from Adespresso give a data point into the CPC increases one might see:
The solution is to test more new creative, build reworked campaigns, test new segments/audiences, rework dayparts, exclude buyers, and refresh landing pages 4x more than you are today. This takes consistent work, but banner blindness is a real challenge, and this is a leading reason your campaign metrics tanked.
#4 Facebook makes a lot of changes
To the platform, to algorithms, to advertising rules, UX testing, how content shows up, and on.
Here are a few recent announced changes:
The only way to keep pace with this is to test. Google and Facebook are very active ecosystems, and even they can’t tell you the impact of all these changes. This is the nature of complex systems, which is why we keep detailed records and test.
Your customers spend a lot of time on Facebook and Instagram, which is why it will stay a useful place to advertise. The question is, can you afford it?
Do you need help with your Brands Facebook ROI? We can help.