31.03.2019

Top new changes in Facebook's advertising platform

Happy April to everyone! Spring is here, the days are getting longer and the flowers are blooming. I hope this gives you plenty of energy to tackle your Facebook marketing and advertising campaigns. Facebook seems to be full of energy too, and this month they rolled out many new updates and new information that is extremely important for our readers here. Some of the biggest changes are the new relevance scores, the new paid video ads and information about how subscription fees work. We are excited to share what we learned. Are you ready to find out what is new in Facebook this...

Happy April to everyone! Spring is here, the days are getting longer and the flowers are blooming. I hope this gives you plenty of energy to tackle your Facebook marketing and advertising campaigns.Facebook seems to be full of energy too, and this month they rolled out many new updates and new information that is extremely important for our readers here.Some of the biggest changes are the new relevance scores, the new paid video ads and information about how subscription fees work. We are excited to share what we learned.Are you ready to find out what is new in Facebook this month? Let's start with what I think everyone wants: the new Facebook relevance scoring metrics.

The single relevance score is divided into three

Facebook's relevance score has been in focus for a long time; this single number can tell you a lot about your campaigns, including expected quality and predicted success, and it can directly affect your CPC and overall return on investment. Facebook has just announced that they are replacing their single ad relevance score with three new "granular ad relevance diagnostic metrics." These three new metrics are:

Quality ranking

Shows the perceived quality of your ad compared with those trying to reach the same audience. This means that this metric is not entirely under your control and is a relative measure.

Engagement rate ranking

It will show you the expected engagement rate that Facebook thinks your ad will get compared with ads targeting the same audience.

Conversion rate ranking

Looks at the expected conversion rate compared with ads targeted at the same optimization goal and audience. Facebook's algorithms still play a major role in assessing relevance, which is why you see the term "expected" appear so often here, and the relevance metrics can be influenced as your campaign progresses. Since the three new metrics give users a better way to monitor their campaigns, this will also provide much more specific feedback that advertisers can use to improve their campaigns going forward. This will be useful for goal achievement, troubleshooting, and because you will no longer have to wonder why your highly engaging campaign is performing poorly in terms of relevance; you will now have the exact answers. The new relevance score will start appearing at the end of next month, so keep an eye out.

Ability to delete history - at the end of 2019

Earlier this month, CFO David Wehner announced that Facebook would launch a history-clearing tool later this year, probably around the end of 2019. This feature is highly desired and will allow users to clear their browsing history on the platform, just like in their web browser. This is why advertisers are worried: it could make it significantly harder to target the right audience accurately. If users regularly delete their Facebook history and browser activity, this could take away advertisers' ability to target them. This, in turn, could make the targeting system a little less effective.

At the moment, I don't think there is much reason to worry.

We will still be able to reach audiences based on site activity, and I don't believe many users will regularly clear their browsing history on a daily or weekly basis, so there is still no reason for concern (although people may choose not to store this information at all, which would be a pretty serious blow). Audience size may be smaller, but I don't think that will make Facebook ads ineffective or slightly more limited. This news is still fairly early, so we will keep you updated.

A new kind of paid video ad

Facebook has just announced "Facebook Showcase," which is a new premium advertising program. Online video and even TV ad buyers participating in the upfront sales cycle will get new opportunities to connect with their target audience through high-quality ads. It will include the following ad types:

In-Stream

Allows advertisers to reach people watching videos from the highest-quality publishers with high popularity on the platform. Placements will be purchased at a fixed price in advance and delivered to target audiences. This can appear in relevant videos in Watch, Pages and the news feed - wherever your audience watches high-quality videos.

In-stream categories

It includes the In-Stream system features, but gives advertisers greater control over displaying them in contextually relevant content. You can choose for your ad to appear only in categories such as entertainment, sports, fashion, food, news, and beauty. You can use this to increase the likelihood that your ad will appear in suitable placements where the audience is likely to respond.

Sponsorships

Allows advertisers to join as the exclusive sponsor of the U.S. program. This will give them the opportunity to place their ads in more specific shows, increasing brand awareness. Showcase will currently only be available for campaigns targeted at audiences in the US, although this will likely expand, and Facebook believes these will be especially useful for reaching younger users who are increasingly engaging with video content.

Policy Documents Information on the New Subscription Service

TechCrunch recently gained access to Facebook documents that give us more information about the subscription feature, which allows users to pay a monthly flat fee to access exclusive content from influencers and businesses. The document shows that Facebook plans to take a 30% fee from net subscription revenue. That is quite a high percentage, especially when you know that Patreon charges only 5%, and compared with the fees of other social networks; YouTube charges 30%, and Twitch 50%. The subscription feature is still relatively new and in an experimental stage, so it will be interesting to see how it works and whether people creating dedicated content are willing to take part in the program, given the higher fees. If their audience is most active here, the answer will likely still be yes; if not, they may turn to other platforms.

Decline in News Programming

Facebook just announced that the news programming on Facebook Watch will change significantly and become "more selective and careful" with regard to the news content they fund. At the moment, they have decided to stop funding two-thirds of all their content. There are reports suggesting that this may be because difficulties have piled up in defending audience rights, while political controversy and transparency issues practically force the platform to make major changes. They say they will continue experimenting with new types of content on Watch and investing in this part of the platform.

Conclusion

Last month’s updates were few, so I was not surprised to see many new features announced this month. Facebook relevance score is the biggest update in this list, and it will be interesting to see how large the granularity metrics are and how they affect CPC results. Premium video ads are also a great new potential tool, and I am personally excited to have the opportunity to use it. Keep an eye on these changes (especially the relevance score update!) and let us know what you think! What do you think about the new relevance scoring metrics? Are you excited about premium video ads? Do you think the subscription commissions will be too high? Share your thoughts and questions.