I was lucky enough to attend Meta’s Small Business Performance Summit in London last week. The entire conference was centred around Facebook’s Performance 5, a new framework for brands to follow to get the most out of their Meta ads.
As Meta, and all advertising platforms, move more towards machine learning and automatic recommendations, they released a strategic guide that touches upon 5 different (but not new) ways to set up an ad account to help Facebook’s powerful algorithm achieve their goals. Here are the 5 components of Performance 5, and everything I learned at Meta’s Performance Summit.
So, What is Performance 5?
Performance 5 is the name of Facebook’s newest ‘Best Practices.’ It’s a framework that explains 5 actionable steps advertisers can take right now to improve a campaign’s performance by connecting your ads to the right audience while lowering your Cost Per Acquisition (CPA). The good news: none of the 5 steps requires any significant changes to ads setup.
Rule #1: Conversions API
In the past, the Facebook Pixel worked on its own to track data and attribute conversions accurately. In a post-cookie world, and thanks to iOS 14, Conversions API (CAPI) has become an increasingly important tool that advertisers can add to their Facebook Pixel to fix the inaccurate tracking and attribution problems that Facebook has.
CAPI connects data from your website to Facebook via a server. Customer information and other data is then shared between the server and Facebook through API, hence the name. In a post-iOS world, CAPI is integral to keep performance accurate.
The Benefits of Conversions API
Facebook claims that, on average, advertisers see a 13% improvement to their CPA when they set up their Pixel with CAPI. Conversions API gives advertisers more data and a more accurate picture of how your Facebook and Instagram ads are doing. Private, no-cookie tracking is a powerful tool to adopt in digital advertising to capture more of the data that would have been lost otherwise.
Another benefit of using CAPI is that it reduces costs. Because of the more data marketers get while using CAPI with their Pixel, Facebook can use that data to target a more accurate audience, making your ads more cost-effective.
How To Use Conversions API
Facebook makes CAPI extremely easy to use by creating powerful integrations with popular platforms such as Shopify, WooCommerce, and Wix. Here is a list of all the app that CAPI integrates with for a no-code way to add the Conversions API to your website. There are many ways you can add CAPI to your website, including by adding it to the code of the website.
Rule #2: Simplified Ad Sets
Consolidation is king, and Facebook approves that message. Simplifying ad sets and campaigns is one of the easiest ways you can clean up an ad account and get the most out of your learning phase. Each change in the ad set resets learning, a phase in which your ad sets are performing their worst.
How To Simplify Your Ad Sets, According to Meta
At the conference, Meta emphasized having up to 5 ad sets per campaign, and up to 5 ads per ad set. They also noted that the best way to combine ad sets is by combining similar audiences, or by stacking multiple audiences and budgets into one ad set.
Rule #3: Broad Targeting
In a nutshell, Broad Targeting allows Facebook to show your ads to people who are most likely to convert after seeing your ad, without any detailed targeting limiting its algorithm.
Throw away any detailed targeting and focus on location, gender, and age to take advantage of Facebook’s algorithm. A good broad audience is about 1 million to 10 million people. It’s also important to note that enabling Advantage+ will also allow Facebook to broaden your targeting beyond your restrictions to people who would improve ad performance. Advantage+ is enabled by default for conversion objectives.
Read more: “Going Broad”: What Does It Mean & How Should Brands Do It?
Rule #4: Mobile-Friendly Video
Users are spending more time on the Reels section of Instagram and Facebook. As an advertiser, you want to be where the users are. Meta recommends using vertical, UGC-style, videos in your ad set. The best part? Anyone can make these types of videos at home with a phone.
What’s most important is that you have a mix of creatives within the account. Only relying on statics or only relying on videos is not a long-term solution.
Rule #5: Ad Testing
Last, but not least, we have Ad Testing. Meta emphasizes using their built in A/B tool to generate the most accurate and scientific tests. They advocate for testing one variable at a time, rather than running a multivariate test. You can easily create an A/B test by setting it up in the Ads Manager toolbar, or by using the Experiments tool.
What to Test, According to Meta:
- Add a mobile-friendly image to a creative-only ad set
- Different creative formats (vertical vs. horizontal)
- Different creative lengths (disclaimer: short-form will win)
- Broad vs. Detailed targeting
- Existing placements vs. Advantage+ Placements
- Existing ad set structure vs. Consolidated ad sets
The theme? Test each element of the Performance 5 framework in your ad account to see if it wins.
Much like Facebook’s Power 5, Performance 5 is nothing new. Frankly, it’s a set of rules that most brands have already been doing, or testing. Performance 5 was made to bring clarity to advertising on Facebook, to modernize the Power 5, and to push marketers towards better performing ads (and ultimately more money for Meta).
PPC Pia 