In recent years, the advertising ecosystem has undergone seismic changes for performance marketers. Evolving data policies and regulations have led to signal loss, creating new challenges as businesses try to find, understand and convert customers. At the same time, artificial intelligence and machine learning are changing how digital advertising works, forcing marketers today to move from placement, to audience acquisition, to results. After all, economic uncertainty led to an almost constant revision of campaign strategies and tactics.
All this change and uncertainty, although challenging, has also opened up new opportunities for growth. Performance predictors were not only able to reduce signal loss, but also achieved greater success by adapting their methods to future conditions. It often starts with a fundamental shift: marketers find that they can achieve short-term results by prioritizing market audiences, but create long-term sales momentum by adopting a mix of reach and performance strategies. In fact, in over 40 conversion optimization studies, we've seen an 87% correlation between audience size and increased purchases. 1
The strongest campaign is that strategic approach—marketing only to people who are truly interested—may not be enough, combined with a core set of strategies: simplify accounts, optimize with automation, diversify creatively, leverage data, and grow. metrics These key strategies, which we call the Performance 5, have helped meta-advertisers reach uncultivated audiences, leverage emerging technologies, and achieve greater campaign effectiveness.
Let's take a quick look at these five approaches and how they enable businesses to unlock their full performance potential:
1. Simplify the structure of the account . As they strive to deliver the right message to the right audience, performance marketers often create complex structures in their advertising systems, such as assigning a unique campaign and/or ad group to each customer segment. While this may have made sense in the past, it can be a disadvantage for AI tools today. Simplifying the account structure with one campaign targeting all ad groups for all clients allows AI to learn faster and deliver more effective results.
2. Improve business performance using automation. Complete automation solutions such as Meta Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns and Advantage+ App Campaigns help maximize results by creating the strongest possible setup across audience, budget, placement, ad creative and conversion targets. Average CPA improvement for Advantage+ Shopping campaigns was 17% and average CPA improvement for Advantage+ App campaigns was 26%. 2
3. Make different creations. Introducing unfamiliar brands and products to new audiences requires creative flair and hard work. Expanding creative strategies – such as using more diverse models, actors and stories – can make campaigns significantly more effective: in one study, we found that diversifying creative ads can increase reach by 9% and conversion efficiency by 32%. . 3
An example of the power of creative diversity in action is the Mac. To generate interest among Z's audience, a cosmetics brand launched a branded content campaign on Meta that included a variety of content with a wide mix of creators, including reels. Thanks to this effort, product awareness increased by 11% and purchase intent among 18-34 year olds increased by 8.5 points. 4 This success led to a constant shift in brand focus: "Since the campaign, we've continued to use this framework in all future campaigns to appeal to a wider audience," says Erica McCarthy, director of consumer marketing for Mac Cosmetics. .
4. Ensure data quality. High-quality data is increasingly important to campaign success, especially as performance marketers strive to maximize effectiveness by capturing new intent signals generated by new audiences. The Conversions API is especially important for advertisers using meta technology: using this tool, marketers can reliably improve measurement and targeting while optimizing deep-funnel actions.
5. Measure upsells. Finally, when marketers adopt new strategies, such as increasing reach, it is important to measure incrementality, the added value to the business as a direct result of each marketing effort. By focusing on growth-based metrics, rather than using methods like last clicks or inbound attribution models, advertisers understand what really drives results.
Some or all of these five strategies are familiar and may already be adopted by performance marketers. If so, what is the next step? How can Performance 5 be improved to achieve greater results than before? A valuable way forward is to maximize performance by measuring availability over time. This is because attracting new audiences is especially important for advertisers who are saturated or close to engagement, meaning that their existing performance spend will go to the same people over and over again, creating diminishing returns.
The best time to scale can be determined by testing and learning: combine the promotion strategy with a sales/performance goal and compare the results over time with traditional business approaches. If you look at the impact on certain metrics like conversions and awareness, you can see the increased impact of adding coverage on cost performance. The most important thing to note is that advertisers often find that before peaking—before full saturation—they get better results across a variety of KPIs, including intent, search volume, and retargeting signals.
How do campaigns for advertisers increase reach and performance? Pandora, one of the world's largest jewelry brands, has adopted this strategy and is one of the companies adapting to the new advertising ecosystem. "As regulations and consumer expectations changed, we had to rethink our marketing mix," said Kasper Mol, global director of paid social media for Pandora Jewelry. "We're not just performance buyers, we've become access buyers."
As part of its evolution, Pandora has developed visions of meta-technology that combine achievement and performance goals and offer new innovations to new audiences. This effort allowed the brand to increase its cost-effectiveness and efficiency: after adding mass campaigns to its efficiency strategies, Pandora was able to increase its reach by 148%, increase the size of its target audience by 4x and reduce its cost per product by 73%. . Additional conversions.
Taking a Performance 5 approach and focusing on how to best scale your reach can be overwhelming for stressed marketers. However, the effort to do so can yield powerful results that help increase interest, purchase consideration, and conversions. Most importantly, the company can achieve sustainable success. "One of the keys to marketing is growing by reaching new consumers," says Pandora Jewelry's Cassper Mole. "It's important for us to invest in these new consumers where they spend their time and where you can attract their attention."
