🗞️ Meta Ads Just Got Way Better

Today’s edition of The Marketer’s Playbook is brought to you by:

In today’s edition:

• A Massive Meta Ads Update

• The FTC Is Coming For You (Maybe)

• Social Media Face Lifts

Hello everyone,

If you’re having difficulty selling your product or service to your prospects, I have some advice: listen before talking. Understanding your customer’s problems is paramount in understanding how to pitch your product as the solution. People only care about things that bring them value. Check out this thread I wrote breaking this idea down, using a classic example:

Happy learning,
Cory Dobbin

A HUGE META ADS UPDATE

As part of a massive update designed to enhance its advertising platform, Meta is rolling out new features to help businesses achieve their goals. The update introduces Conversion Value Rules, allowing advertisers to express preferences for specific audiences or conversions, and plans to support optimization for increasing profit and predicted lifetime value. Meta is also testing an opt-in attribution setting focused on incremental conversions, which has shown promising results in early experiments. Additionally, the company is working on integrating external analytics tools like Google Analytics and Northbeam directly into its ads system, aiming to provide a more comprehensive view of cross-publisher performance. Check out the blog post here for the full breakdown from Meta.

THE FTC IS COMING FOR THE BOTS

The Federal Trade Commission has taken a significant step in combating online deception by finalizing a rule targeting fake reviews and product testimonials, especially AI-generated ones. This new regulation aims to create a more honest and transparent online marketplace by prohibiting businesses from making, buying, or selling fake reviews and banning the purchase of artificial social media engagement metrics like likes, follows, and views from bot accounts. Set to take effect 60 days after its publication in the Federal Register, this unanimously approved rule represents a significant step in the FTC's ongoing efforts to maintain integrity in online commerce and advertising.

For those unfamiliar, Rob Freud on X posts fantastic breakdowns of updates like these. You should give him a follow if this is of interest to you:

How did Original Grain improve Revenue Per Session by 17%?

Last year, extremely couth watch brand Original Grain had a big problem.

They grew site traffic like crazy, but revenue & profit weren’t scaling nearly as well. So, the VP of Marketing, Nate Lagos, turned to Heatmap.

"With element-level revenue data, we were able to identify the highest impact areas of the website to test, and that meant the results of each of those tests produced big increases in Revenue per Session (RPS)," says Nate.

So far in 2024, Nate says Original Grain has increased site traffic by 43% and improved Revenue Per Session by 17%. 

Be like Nate. Use heatmap.

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HUGE X ANALYTICS UPDATE

There's not much to discuss here, but I thought the update was significant enough to give it a dedicated shoutout. X recently improved the analytics suite for premium members to include a breakdown of age, gender, country, and active times across the week for your audience. If you’re a premium user, head over to your Analytics tab now to take a peek!

THREADS’ FUTURE IS STARTING TO LOOK BRIGHT

Meta's Threads platform is stepping up its game with a suite of new web features aimed at enhancing user experience and content strategy. The update introduces audience insights, allowing users to track post performance through metrics like views, replies, reposts, and quotes. Creators and businesses can now analyze follower demographics and growth trends, enabling them to fine-tune their content strategy. The platform also debuts a drafts feature, letting users save up to 100 post ideas for future use and a scheduling tool for planning content. These additions represent Meta's ongoing commitment to evolving Threads into a more robust platform for fostering conversations and connections around shared interests. It may have been a slow start, but things are starting to shape up. Check out Meta’s official announcement on the update below!

• CAPCUT AI: CapCut has introduced a new tool that allows you to create videos using its newly built-in AI.

• X IMPROVES ITS API: X just released an update to its API that allows third parties to create Long Form Posts. Finally!

• LI LOVES B2B: LinkedIn recently published a breakdown of what’s working in the world of B2B marketing on its platform and it’s surprisingly juicy.

• SNAP ADS GET BEEFED UP: Snapchat recently updated its ads platform to improve its optimizations, among other things.

• NO MORE SUBSCRIPTION HEADACHES: A new federal policy aims to ban needlessly complicated subscription cancellations. If your current subscription program requires more than a button click, you might want to update it before it’s too late!
  

APPLE — YOU’RE BEING WATCHED

Okay, so first of all, let’s get this out of the way—as is usual for Apple, the production quality is incredible. This campaign is engaging, fun to watch, and unique in feel, and I generally like it—well, mostly. The feeling I couldn’t shake the entire time I was watching it is that it felt highly patronizing. I mean, we know Apple likes to talk about how they're all for protecting people’s privacy, but the truth is quite the opposite.

I wrote a long post breaking this down, which I’ll link below, but first the ad:

Here are my thoughts in full. I’d love to hear yours!
https://x.com/CoryDobbin/status/1815791334961426551

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