We’ll explain why we recommend avoiding retargeting on Facebook Ads & when to use it effectively in 2023!
Apple’s iOS 14.5 update has changed the Facebook Ads landscape by limiting Facebook’s ability to track web conversion events accurately. Facebook’s custom audiences have been significantly less effective, and retargeting audiences are not fully populating with customer data. Sounds pretty dismal right?
Well, not really. Facebook is fighting back!
Facebook Is Already Using Retargeting In Your Prospecting Campaigns!
Frequency is a metric that tends to get underutilised. If your frequency is above one, this means that your users are being served ads within that campaign multiple times.
Clearly, Facebook is trying to get you conversions within every campaign you are running! Facebook used to have a feature called the Inspect Tool that showed the percentage of impressions that were being served in an ad for the first time versus those who were being hit with a second remarketing touchpoint.
So why the heck should you not use retargeting at all? Well, it’s because you want to ensure that your ad spend in your retargeting campaign is providing you with incremental conversions. If a customer would’ve converted without that extra retargeting touchpoint, you may be wasting your ad spend. Using broad targeting and getting it to work at your desired CPA can help you scale infinitely further than a remarketing campaign ever could.
Over the last couple of years, Facebook has rolled out features like Advantage+ Audience Expansion, which allows Facebook to go outside your custom targeting to find performance. Even if you’re using a retargeting audience, an interest audience or a lookalike audience, Facebook can just do whatever it wants and go outside of that audience if the algorithm thinks it’s going to find you better performance.
Best Facebook Ads Campaign Structure For 2023
So, what does it look like to run an ad account without retargeting? At Reform Digital our best practice for ad accounts in 2023 (some, not all) is what we simply call an acquisition campaign.
This type of campaign uses a cost cap, SKU-specific CBO campaign with broad targeting and the seven-day click attribution setting. Exclusions are what make the acquisition campaign type unique. These acquisition campaigns only exclude pixel purchasers 180 days and a customer export list, exclude past purchasers so that Facebook has the freedom to retarget within that same campaign and find the best performance. This feature is now automatically applied to all campaigns!
Don’t be afraid to have your retargeting style ads within your prospecting or acquisition campaigns. Facebook is smart and it will know to serve which ad to what user at a given time.
The Exception To The Rule!
There is one exception where you may think about using a retargeting campaign.
DPA or dynamic product ad which are ads that dynamically show users which products Facebook thinks they’re most likely to convert. These users have previously taken action on your website by adding to cart or viewing a product page.
Make sure that you remove view based attribution setting for retargeting as Facebook tends to lean very heavily on view attribution for retargeting campaigns, and that’s because most people have already viewed your products or been to your website before.
Every ad you create should try speaking to the customer where they are in their customer journey. What pain point does it solve and where does it speak to them on an emotional level?
What to learn how we can optimise your Facebook Ads to get results in 2023? Let’s chat!
