With its long track record, enormous resources, and persistent efforts invested in innovation and research, Meta, the parent company of Facebook, is today at the forefront of innovation. With 2023 being a pivotal year of experimentation, the stage is set for 2024 to witness the indelible impact of AI on advertising strategies, and some new insights on influencer collaborations. Our Performance Marketing experts Marko Stupar and Nemanja Stojkovic share with us some of the trends that are shaping the marketing landscape for Meta.
AI-Powered Shopping Campaigns
The year 2023 was a watershed moment for digital marketing, a time of bold experimentation with AI-powered campaigns. The insights gained have set the stage for 2024, a year in which we’ll witness AI’s indelible impact on Meta advertising strategies and Meta marketing attribution. Meta’s commitment to advertising efficiency is evident through the Advantage+ Shopping campaigns, a testament to the power of AI. These campaigns are set to redefine the standards for online sales by seamlessly blending prospecting and retargeting. It’s all about personalization at scale, with every customer’s journey uniquely curated.
Compared to the manual setup of shopping ads, Advantage+ Shopping campaigns require less work – they simply need less input, the creative management is streamlined, and audience options are simplified. For example, you can now set up to eight Advantage+ campaigns per country, each with different targeting setups and different creatives. This also gives Meta a better chance at reaching your likely customers. Plus, you can set up to 150 creative combinations, combine prospective and existing audiences in a single campaign, and use machine learning to identify the highest-value audiences.
Unleashing Creativity with AI
In META’s quest for excellence, Advantage+ Creative takes center stage, offering a rich toolbox of optimization strategies. It empowers campaigns with dynamic media elements and catalog enhancements, all tailored to the individual level.
Previously known as “dynamic experiences,” standard enhancements in Meta Advantage+ Creative allow advertisers to set up ad variants (combinations of media and text) and then show them to the users most likely to respond to them. This feature uses various media enhancements (filters, brightness and contrast, ratio, templates, etc) and compositional changes (labels, comments, text combinations, business metadata) that automatically optimize ad performance.
Targeting Precision with Machine Intelligence
Meta’s strategy now banks on the precision of machine intelligence. Advantage+ Audience allows machine learning algorithms to identify high-value customers across the Meta ecosystem. This reduced reliance on manual efforts is set to deliver a significant impact.
Advantage+ Audience uses data like past conversions, Pixel data, and interactions with previous ads to find the best audience or provide information on audiences that’s relevant for tailoring campaigns. According to Meta, Audience brought 13% lower median cost per product catalog sale, 7% lower cost per website conversions, and 28% lower average CPC.
The tool can be used for almost all campaigns except retargeting.
A Cautionary Note on Success
While Advantage+ Shopping campaigns promise extraordinary results, it’s critical to approach them strategically. The depth and variety of your creative assets play a pivotal role. AI thrives when it has a diverse portfolio to test and optimize from. Furthermore, historical data is the bedrock upon which AI algorithms learn and make informed targeting decisions. Basically, you input the data and the algorithm does the rest. This makes Advantage+ ideal for advertisers who’ve already worked with Meta for a while, not so much for brands that are only starting to use Meta advertising.
In addition, you can only use one UTM at the campaign level, which means you may get inadequate audience tracking. Audience definition is limited too, since you can only set prospecting and existing customers.
Lack of flexibility may be a problem for seasoned advertisers, so for a highly nuanced, large campaign that needs more input and third-party tracking, it might be best to stick to regular campaigns.
The Power of Social Proof through Influencer Collaboration
Creative content and influencer partnerships are at the heart of contemporary advertising strategies. Meta’s Partnership and TikTok Spark Ads revolutionize the influencer landscape by upholding authenticity and opening the doors to brand exposure and creative diversity.
Influencer collaborations within the Meta Partnership can be strategically targeted to reach specific audience segments, maximizing the impact of influencer content. Meta platforms offer various creative formats, such as interactive ads, carousel ads, and immersive experiences. This allows influencers to experiment with different content styles and engage audiences in innovative ways, fostering higher levels of interaction and brand recall.
Advertisers within the Meta Partnership can benefit from robust analytics and insights. The platform provides detailed data on the performance of influencer collaborations, including reach, engagement, and conversion metrics. This data-driven approach enables advertisers to refine their strategies based on real-time feedback and optimize future influencer campaigns.
Of course, none of these are new benefits to Meta influencer marketing. However, the trend in 2024 will be a focus on authenticity. Much like on TikTok, Meta embraces the importance of “regular people” and their potential as influencers. We’re talking micro-influencers who bring a lot of social proof through their authentic, unstaged creative content.
The Significance of Authenticity in Advertisements
In the world of influencer marketing, authenticity reigns supreme. Meta Partnership aims to preserve the genuine flavor of influencer content, fostering trust and solidifying brand loyalty. As we wrote in our article on TikTok trends for 2024, this year is going to be all about the realistic influence – real people sharing real experiences and interactions with the brand. Influencer platforms and marketplaces will remain an important source of partnerships, but in 2024 we’ll be seeing a significant rise in the authenticity of ad creatives.
Influencers as Pathfinders to New Horizons – But With Caution!
Influencers possess the remarkable ability to transcend traditional market boundaries. They can introduce a brand to fresh audiences, spearhead product launches, and navigate uncharted territories. Their reach and relatability make them invaluable allies for market expansion and audience engagement. In 2024, brands should leverage this potential as it can help them shorten the research times and discover genuinely new market horizons.
However, it’s important to tread carefully in influencer collaborations. Not every partnership guarantees a high return on investment. Rigorous testing is essential to identify the right influencer that resonates with your brand’s values and target audience. In 2024, brands will no longer be competing with ridiculous sums to partner up with the highest-paid influencers and will instead turn to “real users,” just like we mentioned previously.
A Dual Win: Brand Exposure and Creative Versatility
Placing ads on both Meta platforms, including Facebook and Instagram, and on TikTok, is crucial for advertisers seeking a comprehensive and diversified digital marketing strategy.
Meta’s extensive user base, encompassing billions of users globally, provides unparalleled reach and targeting capabilities. Advertisers can leverage Meta’s sophisticated advertising tools to precisely target specific demographics, interests, and behaviors, ensuring their messages reach the right audience. Simultaneously, TikTok, known for its engaging short-form video content, appeals to a younger and dynamic demographic. By integrating TikTok into the advertising mix, brands tap into a platform synonymous with creativity and trends, fostering authentic connections with audiences.
The dual presence on Meta and TikTok allows advertisers to cover a broad spectrum of users across different age groups and interests, maximizing the potential impact of their campaigns and staying agile in the rapidly evolving digital landscape. This strategic approach will remain a trend in 2024 as it ensures a holistic and well-rounded advertising presence, capitalizing on the strengths of each platform to achieve optimal results.
Wrapping It Up
There’s no doubt that 2024 is going to be a dynamic year for brands advertising on Meta – with new AI and machine learning opportunities, both in tailoring the campaigns and in crafting and fine-tuning the creatives, there are some exciting new horizons opening.
As a certified Meta Business Partner, GrowMojo’s team of Meta experts is ready to embrace these challenges and take your Facebook and Instagram campaigns to brand new levels. Contact us today and let’s get ready for 2024!
