Today in Digital Marketing - What Meta’s New “Lattice” Architecture Means for Marketers

Starting point is 00:00:00 It is Monday, May 15th. Today, artificial acumen behind the overhaul of Meta's new ads AI. Also, LinkedIn will suggest new ways to spam inspiration porn, Reddit gears up to try social commerce, the big catch behind a new TV, and Twitter's last gasp will its new CEO rescue the beleaguered platform. I'm Todd Mathen. That's ahead today in digital marketing. Well, as Meta moves toward more automation, the company recently gave marketers a look under the hood at its new AI ad targeting system, which it claims is driving better results. To improve ad targeting with limited data, Meta has introduced a new ad delivery process called Meta Lattice, which uses multiple

Starting point is 00:00:47 data points to forecast likely ad responses through AI and other predictive technology. To expand its understanding of user interests and activities, the process, for the first time apparently at this depth, looks at data across the Meta platform, like the newsfeed, stories, and reels. Previously, these elements were measured, but they were measured individually. Now, it's advanced predictive models take into account a broader range of data points to better anticipate user behaviors. Quoting socialmediatoday.com, it's basically an expanded database of all of Meta's ad response activity, which, then cross-matched with all the other information it has on each user, enables the Lattice system to better predict

Starting point is 00:01:31 likely ad interest through more advanced mapping. That makes better use of all the data that Meta can access and show people more relevant ads. In addition, the Lattice system is able to better contextualize longer-term ad exposure and its relative impact on response, unquote. According to Meta, this approach has already improved ad exposure quality by nearly 10%. And since it's Monday, that means veteran Meta ad buyer Andrew Foxwell joins me to chat about the platform. So, Andrew, Meta Lattice, what are your thoughts there? You know, I think it's interesting. It's definitely removing, continuing to remove a lot of control that we're going to have as an advertiser. And it's basically Meta saying,

Starting point is 00:02:15 we know better than you what people want to see. And there's some areas where I think it could be helpful, where they're replacing backgrounds and they're, you know, swapping in images. But I know based on Meta's track record that this isn't going to work out as well as they think it will. And that the ads aren't going to look as good as they're claiming they will. And there are going to be errors and money spent on ads where they actually look like crap. So that's my overall concern. But I think the bull case for it is it will make buying more efficient and will show more relevant ads to people over time, which is a good thing.

Starting point is 00:02:54 And I think that the push that we've seen these platforms do, whether it's Meta with its Advantage+, whether it's Google with its Performance Max, all of these AI-based campaigns are, it's not like Meta is going to give you like a couple of options. Like, would you like this background or that background? It's going to handle it like it handled sort of distribution of targeting before, which is like, just tell us generally'm wrong, is we're not even going to be able to see what these ad variations, the different images, the different copy necessarily are going to be. They're just going to try a bunch out.

Starting point is 00:03:32 Correct. That's basically what they've told us thus far. So, you know, I'm trying to get more information about exactly what it's going to be rolled out like, but it's definitely going to continue to remove control. So that says, you know, you're going to be moving a lot of your work on the landing pages you're going to be moving a lot of your work onto the core creative assets themselves um and the other thing that's interesting about it is there's been a lot of i would say like laborious burden that's been on um the pixel and domain verification which uh has new and facebook actually came out meta came out on mond on friday um and said and it was just of course a meta employee and nobody told anybody

Starting point is 00:04:14 but they're they actually are removing the eight events uh that were under the prioritization under aem and domain verification. So that's interesting. And they're saying, and we don't know exactly what the domain verification removal is going to look like, but that's going to be removed. And the eight events is going to be removed. So you'll be able to have all your purchase events and you'll be able to have it add to cart back. So that was a big burden, like an administrative burden that's also being removed

Starting point is 00:04:46 on us. So I think what they're kind of looking at is like, what's the suite of things that hold people back from advertising on Meta? And what are the things that we can remove that are no longer needed now that we're post iOS 14 in a couple of years in? Can you just briefly recap the eight events that came as a direct result of ios 14 right yes and meta actually was doing this to be best in class and they weren't required to do this but this is something they instituted um so that's big um and it's still they're still saying it's best practice to verify your domain by the way but they're removing the idea that you need to do it to run an ad so yeah so the eight events are are you sort of put them in priority of which ones are most important

Starting point is 00:05:28 to you in terms of reporting. Correct. Yeah. So you would look at it and you would look at return on ad spend and you would have buckets of return on ad spend that would take up a lot of those eight events. But now you're going to be able to have the whole list back. So add to cart, initiate checkout, things like that. You'll be able to track those again. Not every one of them is going to be tracked. There's still going to be opt-outs, but you're not going to have to pick and choose which ones you're looking at, which is helpful. So you're going to be able to look at more intermediary metrics that you couldn't previously, which is helpful. Just popping out of the interview for a brief moment.

Starting point is 00:05:58 Since you are on the regular podcast feed, this is normally where we would stop the interview. Each week, my full conversation with Andrew is on the premium feed. But this week, we thought we'd give you a sample of that value. You're going to hear the full thing this week and this week only. If you'd like to make sure you're getting this full conversation each Meta Monday, you'll want to sign up for the premium podcast at todayindigital.com slash premium or by tapping the link in the show notes. OK, back to our chat. Another one of the AI-based, and Meta's grouped all of their AI into this brand called Advantage Plus.

Starting point is 00:06:28 One of the big areas of focus for them has been Advantage Plus shopping campaigns. They got an update recently. Can you tell us briefly, what is Advantage Plus shopping campaigns and what's new here? Yeah, Advantage Plus shopping campaigns are essentially the ability for you to, you know,

Starting point is 00:06:46 say, here's how many existing customers I want to reach. Here's the percentage. And here's the creative assets and donuts and show them to whoever you want. The changes that have continued to roll with advantage plus shopping campaigns is you're getting a little bit more control. So they're starting to say, and they've started to say, potentially in the works, that there will be in the future cost controls, which there are not. They've also hinted at the fact that there may be eventually gender controls,

Starting point is 00:07:16 which currently there are not. So all this is to say that they're testing it and they're rolling it out. And it is, I think, right now for direct response advertisers, one of the most stable places for people. But over time, there will be some more controls, which is going to be helpful for us. So just something to mention. Interesting. It almost sounds like backpedaling a little bit, you know, before they were sort of like, no, just just throw it all together. You know, gender is all together. It doesn't really matter. We'll handle it a little bit. But I mean, who knows if they're actually going to do it. But they're hinting that there may be some little controls, because I think it's at the end of the day, there are use cases that it is really relevant. And it and they know that they're the system is potentially gender controls up a level into the campaign setup and not into the ad set setup where it has traditionally been? What is that? This has been one of the one of the comical pieces of this that Barry Hot called out.

Starting point is 00:08:17 If you don't follow Barry on Twitter, which is the places for all of the controls are changing. So you have some places where it's at the campaign level for some types of ads and some types of, you know, if you're doing CBO, you have some that are at the ad set level. So that is actually totally convoluted now and you have to pick and choose like when and where. But I think this continues to say, and we may have talked about this last time, if you're not testing and have not tested with your best creative assets, Advantage Plus Shopping campaign, that's going to be a's something you can run in a small sense right alongside it to get a test going. And they're going to be they're doing a lot of innovating within Advantage Plus shopping campaigns that are tied into the stuff we talked about before with Lattice. So a lot of the AI is going to be rolled out there first because that's really the vehicle in which it's

Starting point is 00:09:22 working the best for them now. So it's sort of like you want to make sure you're ahead of the game on all of that by doing it. It's just so weird, though. Like, I mean, so if we're at least in this sort of short term, if these reports are correct, if we want to have one group targeting women, one group targeting men, we'd have to set up two separate campaigns, which changes the learning, which changes the optimization. It's bizarre. Yeah. Speaking of weird glitches, so a couple of weeks ago, Meta had a big platform glitch that affected spend. We're just starting to see some actual refunds come in. What are you hearing? Yeah, I mean, from what it looks like across the board, if you look at total spend throughout the

Starting point is 00:10:02 day, and then you look at for a very, you know, accounts from $500 a day to $100 a day to $10,000 a day, there seemed to be a little bit of variance between those that turned ads off immediately and those that did not if they kept them running in terms of how much was refunded. If you kept it running, it does appear just on first glance from, you know, the 30, 40 accounts that I've looked at, that if you kept it running, the refund is smaller because the efficiency came back throughout the day. But if you turned it off, it actually looks like you got more of a refund on a percentage basis. Now, if you look at, I looked at the averages across ours, and then I looked at some stuff that was shared in the founders membership. And the average is basically about 55 to 60% of the total spend for that day that's been refunded, which is way more than I've ever seen. So when we talked about this a couple weeks ago, I was like, I don't know, but actually it seemed that there's more we got more back than we thought and these are refunds not credits which they usually try to do some some were credits and some were refunds it depends on

Starting point is 00:11:15 the account um and i don't there's no rhyme or reason i don't know why but yes for the most part things we we've seen most of the refunds reported. So I'd be interested to hear from anybody else kind of what it was for you. But I think overall, it's more than I expected, which is good. And it's not like people lost their shirt the whole day from the amount that they spent. is a small media buyer, small advertiser, does not have a meta rep to talk to, how do they know whether they've received a refund? And if they haven't, how do they go about asking for one? Yeah, you can go actually into billing and it's under there. And so it's automatically posted. You don't have to do anything and you don't have to talk to anybody. So if you have questions, you can go on chat support and ask them. But that's the number that you have is what's within billing. So it was automatically posted. You don't have to do anything extra.

Starting point is 00:12:14 I have been seeing a lot of discussion lately that Meta is shifting a lot of spend, or at least it's automated spend anyway, to shops. Are you seeing that? And what impact does that have? Yeah, definitely. A lot of it is there's certain instances where Meta started to default the destination to website and shops. So I, you know, check that at your ad level if you're not seeing that. But the real issue is I think that a lot of us don't have shops set up like in a perfect way and they don't look great. And there's a lot of, of course, processing issues with shops in terms of payment processing, etc. PayPal being an example.

Starting point is 00:12:56 So that hinders a lot of conversions. And so I think that they've been shifting more money over to shops in the last, let's say, since the outage, because there's a lot of people discussing performance going well and then kind of this like breaking point after the outage. And it appears that one of the big shifts is the shops spend that being less efficient and taking place there. So you can still adjust that back. That's one thing. But it's another thing just to be conscious of that and be aware of that. And also over time, they may force us into having shops be part of the game because they're going to continue to get, you know, that helps build their data ecosystem more efficiently and more effectively. So if you don't have your shops customized, I would recommend doing so.

Starting point is 00:13:46 Um, and that can be done on meta. We've talked about that before or with a third party tool. But that would hurt performance, right? At this point when they're doing that. At this point, I think what they're trying to do is I think they're trying to get, um, conversions through, um, through shops. And I think they're trying to get, um, prove that it can be an economically viable place for direct, direct response advertisers to spend money so they can come out at the end of Q2 and

Starting point is 00:14:11 say, by the way, we have, we have 80% of advertisers in the United States now are utilizing shops, even though it was automatically defaulted. And we had X number of revenue or, you know, whatever, go through it. And we had a client that, you know, they, we just got the weekly report from them and their revenue was 50, 50 shops and the website. So, you know, I think the shop definitely converted less, but that's where we're trying to put our dollars and energy into now to make that better over time. So like, yes, I think now, I think that's why we've seen, one of the reasons we've seen for the dip in performance that's taken place. Andrew, thank you. We'll chat again next week. Thank you.

Starting point is 00:14:57 Andrew Foxwell, you can learn more about Andrew's meta ads training at b.link slash Foxwell or his Slack community at b.link slash founders. Both of those are affiliate links, but I have taken his courses. I pay for his Slack community. They are second to none. And once again, that was a free sample of what you would hear if you were subscribed to the premium feed. Once again, premium podcast, tap the link in the show notes or go to todayindigital.com slash premium. To other platforms now, we move to LinkedIn, which continues to expand its AI-based prompt features to get users to post more. It has been rolling out its new analytics and tools dashboard to people who've activated creator mode. This shows performance trends, associated profile topics, and a list of creator elements available to you in the app, like LinkedIn Live or newsletters or CTA links.

Starting point is 00:15:51 Well, now the platform's added another option to its creator mode dashboard called Conversations Happening Now. This feature includes a listing of post ideas that might be relevant to your audience. These posts are based on your previously shared content and topics that your audience might find interesting. You can click on a post to review it in detail and then consider just reposting it, Thank you. or restricted accounts in your follower or connection numbers. Hibernated accounts, those are profiles that members have temporarily deactivated rather than permanently shutting them down. Going forward, LinkedIn said it will regularly update all member connections and follower accounts to remove these restricted and hibernated accounts.

Starting point is 00:16:36 And if these accounts again become active, they will be re-included. From memes to merch, following in TikTok's and Meta's footsteps, Reddit seems to be venturing into the realm of social commerce. They're advertising for a new job called Senior Product Manager of Ads Marketplace E-Commerce, among others. The company is also seeking engineers in Amsterdam to focus on shopping ads. Those job listings state that those roles will contribute to building the shopping ads delivery team and assist in launching it in 2023 or 2024. According to a pitch deck of credentials shared with media, the platform plans to start testing social commerce in the fourth quarter of this year. Reddit declined to comment on the matter, but four marketers interviewed by Digiday confirmed that Reddit is working on these features. They also revealed the platform has been discussing upcoming opportunities with agencies.

Starting point is 00:17:39 Is the new CEO of Twitter the savior it needs to turn revenues around? Linda Iaccarino, the veteran ad sales chief at NBCU, is exiting the TV world to take the reins at Twitter. But can she extinguish the company's advertising dumpster fire? According to Marketing Brew today, one agency executive believes her experience in industry connections could bring maturity back to Twitter's ad landscape. Another executive interviewed in the piece goes as far as to say that she's the ideal candidate to save the platform from the hands of its current ownership. But the report notes that the real challenge ahead involves finding a balance between limited content moderation favored by Elon Musk and meeting the requirements of advertisers who are looking for a more brand-safe platform. Despite Twitter's

Starting point is 00:18:25 recent troubles, many in the ad industries hold hope that Yakarino's appointment could help steer its advertising business back on track. Looking to give your customers an immersive advertising experience from which they literally can't escape? Tele, that is a hardware startup, announced today that it will be giving away half a million smart TVs for free as part of its new marketing campaign. The catch? Consumers have to watch nonstop ads. It's developed a dual screen smart TV with a 55 inch 4K screen, a built in five driver sidebar, and then a second screen nine inches tall mounted underneath. This second screen is where the ads play all the time, along with widgets like sports scores, music playback, the weather and so on. The bottom panel is lit up at all times while streaming other content. Users also have to agree to give tele access to their personal data.

Starting point is 00:19:32 The only small price they pay is eternal ad captivity. Enjoy. Summer has arrived. 29 degrees out here today. Even the cat won't go outside. That's odd. Thanks for listening. See you tomorrow. I'm going to do it.

Today in Digital Marketing - What Meta’s New “Lattice” Architecture Means for Marketers

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