Today in Digital Marketing - The Google Ad Error Message Nobody Wanted to See

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Starting point is 00:00:18 starting at $19 per month at zensurance.com. Be protected. Be Zen. Today, a terrifying error message on Google Ads platform at zensurance.com. Be protected. Be Zen. Thank you. Friday, January 7th, 2022. Happy Tricolor Festival, Italy. I'm Todd Maffin from EngageHue Digital, and here is what you missed today in Digital Marketing, episode 535. Well, a lot changed in the digital marketing landscape last year, but I think most of us would agree that in the top three of biggest changes

Starting point is 00:01:16 that upended our work was the continued march toward machine learning in our ad campaigns. It used to be we would control everything to a micro-control level. We would segment everything out into like 20 ad sets, each with its own niche audience. And inside each ad set, 20 ads, each with slight variations on copy or format or creative. These days, though, it seems the pendulum has swung the other way. Now platforms want us to upload everything we have in one big chunk and let them sort it out.

Starting point is 00:01:49 So what does Facebook ad campaign optimization look like in 2022? To figure that out, I'm joined by veteran Facebook advertiser, Andrew Foxwell. Andrew, hello. Hello. So I feel like the going wisdom these days is to write like 20 headlines,

Starting point is 00:02:06 20 body copies, make 20 videos and just dump everything into a single ad ad set and let Facebook's machine learning sort it out. Am I wrong there? No, I don't think that you're wrong. And I think that that's certainly one approach. I think what's important to bring up in that in that sense of how you how you think about utilizing the AI from Facebook, I think what's important to bring up in that sense of how you think about utilizing the AI from Facebook, I think that there are camps that it's one whole, you know, the camp is completely on one side of that where everything is automated. You put it all in a campaign budget optimization campaign. You're remarketing your mid funnel, your top funnel, and you put in dynamic creative testing and you put in all your elements and copy and you just say, let it run for a month and see what happens. And I think that there can be instances where that's effective. And I don't think you want to be in the other way either, which is, you know, when I started teaching, after well, when I was running Facebook ads, like I still am, but when I really

Starting point is 00:02:58 was actively running, let's say, hundreds of 1000s of dollars a day, in some cases of Facebook ads, when I was really learning the fundamentals of that, breaking things out was a big part of it. I think that now we live somewhere in the middle. I think that you have to utilize the AI in the proper way. So dynamic creative testing is a great way to think about that. But putting in 20 variants with a budget of $5 a day or $50 a day or even $100 a day, it's just not enough. And you're going to have Facebook choose things very quickly. And it may give you a result. But is it a statistically significant result? Or is it one that Facebook is just choosing at that time? And then that's what they're running. And like, that's what you're stuck with. So I think that

Starting point is 00:03:43 you have to balance that I think that you can bring that same conversation to audiences and the way that you start to stack out audiences. I think that you think about a broad audience of, you know, 25 to 45 year old men. And that might be a big part of what you're running in your funnel. But from an incrementality standpoint, you also need to be running niche interests or niche interest clusters, you know, lookalikes aren't as effective as they were, but running those with ad copy that matches that niche with landing pages that match those niches. And that's really how you're going to grow because having multiple pitches to multiple hooks to multiple people, you know, it's not as

Starting point is 00:04:23 broken out as it once was, but it's still relevant. And it can run in parallel to this thinking of let Facebook decide. And I think that's really where you find wins moving forward. And I think that can help add that extra 10 to 20% to your campaigns. And it's certainly, you know,

Starting point is 00:04:39 when I redid the scaling course that we have this year, like 50 advertisers, which I always do now with my courses because it's such a diverse set of opinions in this and buying industry of like, what actually worked though in terms of growing? And that was really the answer to be honest was it's not all or nothing.

Starting point is 00:04:58 It's not one way entirely. It's that you have to sort of build these things and they can kind of live in parallel to one another to make sure that you're not just depending on Facebook to decide, oh, this ad's shown to, you know, women that are 35 to 55 and that's it. That's who we're going to show it to. And this is where your creative lives. It's that your product probably has other niches and has a good product market fit in other places outside of where Facebook determines within the first 30 days of running ads or in the first 30 days of scaling that it wants to show those ads.

Starting point is 00:05:31 So I think it's sort of both, which is complicated, but that's really how you're going to continue to grow into 2022, in my opinion. Andrew Foxwell, he leads Foxwell Digital, which has some of the best training courses on the Facebook ad platform. Everything from optimizing and scaling campaigns to auditing your ad account to the art of influencer performance marketing. You can learn more about those courses through our affiliate link at B dot link slash Facebook courses or tap the link in the show notes. By the way, my full conversation with Andrew is actually more than a half an hour long, covers a ton more detail. That will be coming to the premium podcast feed tomorrow morning in a special weekend edition. It's not too late to sign up. Just go to todayindigital.com slash premium feed or tap the link in the episode notes. While we're on the topic of the Facebook, excuse me, the meta ad platform, a couple of significant changes to let you know about.

Starting point is 00:06:27 First, Instagram has made two updates to video ads. You can now create Instagram ads from existing Instagram videos. After you upload a video, select use existing post within the ad setup section and then choose the video. Also, a new range of aspect ratios will be supported for video ads in Instagram Feed and Instagram Explore. Second, advertisers can now use automated lookalike audiences in addition to their retargeting. Previously, advertisers were using retargeting

Starting point is 00:06:56 with dynamic ads to remind people about products they've previously browsed or purchased and may have seen a decrease to their targeting audience size as more people are opting out of app tracking with iOS 14.5. So what does it do? Quoting the company, when you turn on the automated lookalike audience option, it will automatically create a lookalike audience based on your retargeting selections. If you choose to not use the automated lookalike

Starting point is 00:07:21 audience, you may see a decrease in your audience size. Do you have business insurance? If not, how would you pay to recover from a cyber attack, fire damage, theft, or a lawsuit? No business or profession is risk-free. Without insurance, your assets are at risk from major financial losses, data breaches, and natural disasters. Well, who could blame you if you jumped off your chair this morning when you saw the error message in Google Ads reading this? Broad match keywords are on. Keywords will be saved as broad match. An error message that came up when you tried to enter exact match keywords. I'm sorry, what?

Starting point is 00:08:13 Because broad match is pretty much the opposite of what advertisers want when using exact match keywords. One user yesterday tweeted Google after seeing the alert and asked, quote, Where are you hiding these new settings so I can keep my client's account from spending on BS keyword variations? Unquote. Where indeed, Google? Well, turns out it was just a bug. This message is an error that we are working to remove. The message was intended for a potential opt-in experiment, but has no impact on how keywords are saved or the traffic to which these keywords match. Our apologies for the confusion. You know that dumb privacy banner on all websites these days, including yours, asking you to accept cookies? The accept button is easy, but the reject cookies button is buried under a bunch of clicks asking

Starting point is 00:09:12 you to turn on different groupings or some other nonsense. Well, the French think it's nonsense too, and now both Google and Facebook are being fined for making it too confusing for consumers to reject browser cookies. France's data protection agency has fined Google $170 million and Facebook $68 million because, quote, refusing cookies should be as easy as accepting them, unquote. According to EU law, when citizens give up their data online, they must do so with a full understanding of the choice they're making. The agency says that tech giants are tricking users by using manipulative dark patterns to get them to accept cookies. Quoting the agency, the websites offer a button allowing the user to immediately accept cookies. However, they do not provide an equivalent solution enabling the internet user to easily refuse

Starting point is 00:10:05 the deposit of these cookies. Several clicks are required to refuse all cookies against a single one to accept them, unquote. There is a three-month deadline to change the ways of the companies when they're operating in France, at least. The popular CMS WordPress has announced high-level threat vulnerabilities and is advising that users update their sites immediately. The company said four vulnerabilities have been patched that are rated as high as eight on a scale of one to ten.

Starting point is 00:10:38 Usually we see these in plugins, but in this case, the vulnerabilities are actually in the WordPress core itself. Since these vulnerabilities are now in the public code, it is important for users to update their WordPress installation to the latest version, which is 5.8.3. Remember, if you want to hear the full interview with Andrew Foxwell on what Facebook ads will look like in 2022. You will want to subscribe to the premium feed of this podcast. You get more stories in each episode, no ads. It comes out earlier than the free feed and a couple of times a month, exclusive access to deep dive episodes with industry experts. In addition to Facebook ads tomorrow,

Starting point is 00:11:17 we'll be doing a deep dive episode later in the month on local SEO. You can sign up at todayindigital.com slash premium feed or tap the link in the show notes. Yes, Kat is doing very well. Otis is fitting in quite nicely. We really want to get him a cat tree and a couple of toys, but we've been completely snowed in here, which I know. I live in Canada. You'd think that would be a normal thing, but the part of Canada I live in, Vancouver Island, does not get a lot of snow.

Starting point is 00:11:41 So this is a new, this might be the most snow in a single winter I've ever experienced in my life. And I'm old now. I've got a lot of years. Anyway, we're hoping it'll melt and Otis will get the toys that he deserves. Our dog, on the other hand,

Starting point is 00:11:56 is giving a lot of side eye right now to Otis, who, you know, is the favorite child. Today in digital marketing is produced by EngageQ Digital on the traditional territories of the Tsunamik First Nation on Vancouver Island. Scripting and promotional support

Starting point is 00:12:10 by Steph Gunn. Podcast music licensing by Source Audio. And our theme composer, Mark Blevis, is never gonna dance again. Guilty feet have got no rhythm. I'm Todd Maffin. Have a restful weekend. I'll talk to you on Monday. I don't know about you, but for me, it's always a huge pain having to track down developers for every little thing I need in Google Analytics? Wouldn't it be amazing to have an analytics tool that automatically captures every single event

Starting point is 00:12:49 on your site, no coding required? Well, that tool has finally arrived. Oribi is a powerful yet easy to use analytics tool whose goal is to make analytics easy and accessible for everyone. Imagine being able to see all your site's events right down to the button clicks without having to nag a single developer. With Oribi, you absolutely can. Just install Oribi's code once on your site and you're done. Oribi will automatically detect any changes you make to your website. Oribi shows you how your content impacts your conversions, which channels bring you the most high quality visitors, and exactly where on your site you're losing leads. You can even export events from Oribi to Google and Facebook

Starting point is 00:13:31 in order to craft more powerful lookalikes and retargeting campaigns. Never have to worry about bugging your developers again. Try Oribi for free at O-R-I-B-I dot I-O.

Today in Digital Marketing - The Google Ad Error Message Nobody Wanted to See

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