Enjoy the Silence

Meta is making a big change to its ads algorithm… but you probably never found out about it. Why can't Meta keep ALL marketers in the loop?!

Meta to Give More Weight to One-Day Conversions

Meta is updating its ad algorithm, which may make the platform seem less effective for some advertisers and could lead to higher ad prices.

At issue are conversion campaigns, and the change will be to give more weight to conversions that occur one day from when a user first clicks.

Until now, the algorithm driving conversion campaigns wasn’t distinguishing quality or weighting of those conversions, based on the conversion window length.

💡 What is a conversion window? [read]

This was reported first by Adweek which said it learned of it from a note the WPromote agency sent to its clients.

Why a price increase?

OPINION: Why is Meta So Secretive About Updates?

Changing how conversion windows are weighted in the ads algorithm is a big deal.

Which is why it’s especially peculiar, though not unexpected, that Meta chose to not announce this change on its web site.

In fact, on the same day this news was leaked, Meta put out a detailed blog post sharing three smaller changes to its ads platform [details below], but did not mention the conversion window changes.

Instead, Meta seems to dole out news about algorithmic changes and other major shifts randomly — sometimes to its biggest agency partners, sometimes seemingly accidentally from a support rep’s email, sometimes not at all.

Marketers have tried to get Meta to consider an industry liaison role, like Google has for its search and ads businesses, but so far, the request has fallen on deaf ears.

It was only after significant industry pressure that the company put up a status page for its ads platform, though many times outages are widespread and that page reports all is well.

That means, of course, that those in the know can benefit from the news, while those outside Meta’s chosen circle — the vast majority of advertisers — are running campaign strategies that might be outdated.

While it might not legally be a form of insider trading, it sure as hell doesn’t feel good if you’re not in the circle.

— Tod Maffin

Three More Meta Ad Conversion Changes

So, to those updates Meta did announce…

Let’s walk through the changes, paraphrasing liberally from Meta’s announcement text:

1. Conversion value rules

Meta says businesses can use this feature to express which audiences or conversions they value more or less.

For example, you might have certain customer segments that have a proven 30% higher lifetime value. In that case, you’re probably willing to pay more to reach those customers.

In the past, you’d have had to break these customers out into a separate campaign.

With this new feature, though, you can define a higher bid for just these customers without having to create a separate campaign.

2. New “incremental conversions” setting

Starting later in the year, Meta says it plans to launch a new opt-in attribution setting that optimizes for, and reports on, incremental conversions. These are conversions that its systems believes would not have occurred without the ad being shown.

This is in contrast to optimizing for volume, which focuses on driving as many total attributed conversions as possible.

This new setting is designed to shift ad delivery to specifically focus on driving more of those incremental conversions.

Meta says when it tested this in an experiment earlier in the year, advertisers saw an average improvement of more than 20% in incremental conversions.

3. Direct cross-platform connections

Cross-platform measurement has always been a challenge for marketers.

Someone might see an ad on YouTube, research off a Pinterest pin, and eventually make the purchase off a Meta ad. Of course, those platforms themselves can’t see into the walled gardens of their competitors, so marketers have used third-party tools to try to cobble a better view of it all together.

Meta says they’re going to make it simpler by letting businesses connect their analytics tools directly to its ads system through an API. Meta plans to start with Google Analytics and Northbeam, with Triple Whale and Adobe on the list after.

What Kinds of LinkedIn Ads Work Best?

If you want to get the best bang for your bucks on LinkedIn, use a video ad.

That’s the key finding from a study LinkedIn commissioned from Magna Media Trials.

The study looked at content from more than 1,700 users on the platform. Here are the key findings:

Use video ads

For ad formats, video ads drive higher response in all the main metrics, though the company said display ads also do fairly well.

But don’t try to be funny

Second, it found that of all the perceptions it measured about B2B ads running there — emotional appeal, strong storytelling, being memorable, and so on — that being funny (or trying to be funny) was the least helpful for LinkedIn ads.

Focus on message clarity

Most helpful: Having a clear message.

The creative gap

That doesn’t mean ‘don’t be creative’ — in fact, when polled, almost half of those users said creative ads would make them more likely to look into the advertiser’s other products and services, and 38% said it would make them feel a closer connection to the advertising brand.

So, lots of B2B brands are being creative, right? Not quite. Only about a quarter of people said the ads they saw on LinkedIn were actually creative.

Walmart Thrives Amid Economic Uncertainty

There are lots of indicators economists use to try to forecast what the short-term future holds — inflation rates, interest rates, and so on.

But one informal measure analysts use is how Walmart is doing. The largest retailer in the United States is often used as a rough gauge for how American consumers are faring.

💡 FUN FACT: Ninety percent of the U.S. population lives within 16 km of a Walmart store.

Numbers are up

The company said today sales at its stores in the United States rose just over 4 percent, to $115.3 billion, beating analysts' estimates. Its U.S. e-commerce business jumped 22 percent.

That seems to fly in the face of some recent media speculation that the American economy is entering another downturn.

Another sign: About a third of customers were willing to paid extra for delivery time under three hours.

The overall U.S. economy

Google Trends Gets More Region/Time Granularity

One tool that social media managers like to keep close to their chest is a free service by Google that can let brands get a jumpstart on trending topics.

That tool is Google Trends, which is a very high level look at what people are searching for on the web.

This week, Trends got a nice update — one that international users will especially like.

More granular

Now, users can drill a little deeper into the trending topics to see a few headlines and links that can explain why something is trending. There’s also more data on how long it’s been trending, total search volume, and a small line chart showing the interest over time.

You can also now filter it by country and even regions within a country, like a state or province. And there are time filters to let you see only the most recently trending topics.

Google says it now detects 10 times as many emerging trends as before — and if you leave the tab open, it will refresh every 10 minutes.

Google Was Too Soft on Workers: Former CEO

Well, somebody said the quiet thing out loud.

In a video that just recently surfaced, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, speaking to Stanford University students, made the startling admission that:

In a Stanford talk posted today, Eric Schmidt says the reason why Google is losing to @OpenAI and other startups is because Google only has people coming in 1 day per week 👀

— Alex Kehr (@alexkehr)
10:04 PM • Aug 13, 2024

Then, it got worse.

Then, he told students that startups can steal IP all they want. They just need to hire smart lawyers to make the resulting lawsuits go away.

All’s fair in tech and war, I guess?

Dude, you’re not supposed to admit that…

The opinions weren’t startling, of course. It was the fact that he said it at all. Those sorts of thoughts are usually kept at the boardroom table.

Indeed, at one point in the video he asks students to keep what he told them private. Then, when the moderator pointed out that several students were recording the lecture on their phones, Schmidt seems surprised. Maybe even a bit embarrassed.

You can probably guess what happened next.

Media reported on his comments…

… and Schmidt tried to backpedal, telling Techcrunch yesterday he had misspoke.

Stanford University, which had its own cameras running, has removed the video from their YouTube channel.

Aaaaand scene.

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