Media metrics are not the only metrics that matter. Facebook's just realised this.
Facebook has decided not to make Campaign Budget Optimisation (CBO) mandatory after all. This, as anyone who works in Paid Social will know, is a Good Thing.
CBO put simply automates how your ads spend across different campaigns, automatically funnelling budgets away from underperforming campaigns and into the successful ones. A handy timesaver, then. And a more efficient overall campaign to boot. What's not to like?
This article intends to answer this question.
Facebook have been on an automation drive for some time now. I guess the theory goes that the better the results advertisers see, the more likely they are to funnel their ad-bucks into Facebook's coffers. Indeed, CBO forms one of the cornerstones of Facebook's Power 5 suite of automation-led strategies for advertisers, a best-practice crib sheet to be followed for maximum results.
I've written about Power 5 before and how, whilst it clearly means well, most of the strategies it espouses are best avoided. Each represents a black-box of unaccountability, essentially handing the campaign over to Facebook to optimise (as well as score).
But even if it delivers better media results, allow me to explain why CBO is in many cases best avoided:
Your KPIs aren't always "media" results. And even when they are (clicks, impressions, reach), they often probably shouldn't be. Example: loads of advertisers set up their campaigns with the aim of driving traffic. This is... fine. I'd father rather we be driving traffic for some measurable purpose such as a sale or an equiry. However, may be that we genuinely have no "action" we want the user to do; perhaps we just want to send people through to a page that gives them more information on the product/cause that they have had showcased to them in the ad unit. But if this were the case, the only clicks of value to me are the ones that stick around. Handily metrics like dwell time, bounce rate and the number of pages viewed by a user are easily tracked by any analytics package. The problem: Facebook will only see "clicks" and, with a CBO in place, it's going to direct media spend to whatever placements are driving them, regardless of their quality. We, the advertiser, will also be paying for those low-value clicks. Thanks CBO... :|
Having a CBO means it's easier for campaign managers to clump their targeting together in larger blocks - we don't need to segment to the same level as the algorithms take care of everything. The client gets their shiny media metrics, plenty reach, nuff clicks, happy days... Indeed, another element Power 5 actively promotes is to reduce the number of campaigns/adsets (and let the algos take care of the rest). But, as I mention in my previous article, this robs the advertiser of visibility of with whom our ads are resonating. "Doesn't matter, I'm getting a better Facebook ad campaign". Well, fine, but this data is invaluable to everything else a client might be planning - future Facebook campaigns, digital, offline, marketing... you name it. Facebook actively recommend the obfuscation of this, and CBO is one of the primary enablers. Don't be so lazy, folks. Segment your campaigns properly and reap the benefits on Facebook and in the real world...!
Awareness is great and Facebook's ad platform is awesome at generating it hyper-efficiently and measurably. It's also pretty good ad generating sales, their ad formats and platforms for retailers get better and better. Finally, it's also a great platform for tying these two ends of the funnel together, with superb retargeting options (e.g. the ability to generate audiences of those made "aware" by our upper-funnel ads with more sales-focused lower-funnel placements in endless permutations). CBO buggers this to an extent. To explain: a CBO-enabled "awareness" campaign will automatically gravitate ad spend towards those users showing the best engagement. But are these necessarily the most likely buyers/purchase decision makers? CBO overrides this kind of attribution. Yes, assessing this manually takes time and skill, but that's why we should be employing talented people!
To give an example of this last point, take an example of a luxury brand. Facebook's targeting can be pretty granular, but even within a relatively specific target, it stands to reason that best engagers are going to be the biggest fans of the brand. Such fans are likely to be from across the social spectrum - what lady doesn't love the look of a Mulberry bag? What car geek wouldn't be interested in the latest Porsche?
But of course the buyers of luxury brands are only going to be a small, high-net-worth subset of these engagers. CBO is going to be pointing our ad dollars only at what it sees as "the most engaged", even if these interactors are merely aspirational admirers. Great media campaign with tip-top engagement metrics, but we've sacrificed control of what matters.
And to think that all this was going to be made mandatory! Good call, Facebook. I'm glad you realised that this was a daft idea when you did.