Unknown Speaker 0:10
Oh, let’s see. Are you ready, Jason? I am David King. Excellent. Good to see you.
Unknown Speaker 0:16
Good to see you as well. Let me see if I can get my screen.
Unknown Speaker 0:21
Open around. And
Unknown Speaker 0:26
this is Jason Daly, whose job title he will describe. But he is with Facebook. And he will be talking about Facebook as creative creatives.
Unknown Speaker 0:39
If you’re David, is that a up in? Looking good? Yes. Awesome. So, I guess Good morning and afternoon or evening, I know we have a wide audience from all around the world. So thank you everybody for joining. As David said, my name is Jason Daly, I’m a head of agency lead at Facebook. And essentially, in my role, my team and I work with agency partners to help them grow to help them maximize their performance on the platform, and to help them drive performance for their clients. And today, we’re going to be talking about creativity, and specifically everything that we know about Dr. Creative. Now, there are 1000 different things we could have put as a topic today or discussed. So why creative, you know, we could have been talking about brand safety, targeting best practices, the evolving data ecosystem and the depth of the cookie, iOS 14 has already come up attribution, we’re going to talk about creativity, because ad creative is one of the most important factors in determining the success of a campaign on our platform. And so once you’ve done all of the things that Vila has told you to do, and you set up one of the most sophisticated audience strategies, and you have a really complex targeting approach, and you’ve got pixels implemented all over your site, you’re still left with a blank canvas with which to put something in front of the consumer. And so if you go back in history, in particularly the history of Dr. Creative when we looked at it through the years, you know, the format’s have evolved from print to TV to the early days of digital and even to some of the first link ads on Facebook. But the creative formula hasn’t really changed that much. You know, all these ads, whether it’s Chuck Norris, or a Snuggie, or a gravity blanket, they all rely on price and product and calls to action. So very heavy text, a lot of product imagery, a reason to believe in, you know, a very compelling prompt to act. However, mobile has changed everything. So the widespread adoption and evolution of mobile presents a new opportunity for us as marketers, as the lines really blurred between traditional advertising and Dr. And so you know, in your phone today, and your mobile newsfeed attention doesn’t discriminate between you know, the personal posts that you see in the ads that you see. And we really have to use relevancy and creativity to stand out. Even objectives and how we think about marketing is less relevant. And so when you’re scrolling through, you know, your Twitter feed or your Facebook newsfeed, you don’t see a piece of content and think, Oh, well, this is a brand ad, let me be emotionally moved, or, oh, wow, this is our ad, it’s okay if it’s a little crappy. And so everything that you put out, is really an opportunity to invest and connect with a relationship with your consumer. And what we know is, you know, for our platform release, in particular, the average person is consuming more than a statue liberties worth of content every day, and so creative as the most important lever that you have. Now, this all makes intuitive sense. But the data actually backs up as well. And so what we found and what’s been corroborated by third parties is that about 50% of your impact, which is the performance that you’re being paid to deliver, whether that’s you know, your boss, or you know, it’s a company that you own, you’re paying yourself, that 50% of that impact comes from creative. This particular stat that you see comes from a Nielsen Catalina study, which showed that about 56% of a brand sales lift from digital advertising can be attributed to the quality of the creative. So this is true for our platform. But it’s true for all the other marketing and advertising that you’re doing on the web as well. So creative as a key driver of campaign performance. And even the best media plans won’t perform or won’t do well or won’t save the campaign, if the creative is poor. So how does this actually play out specifically for Facebook? Well, the Facebook auction is really designed to create the most value both for people so that people who come every day as well as businesses, and it’s really built to balance two fundamental goals. On the one hand, we’re trying to maximize advertiser value, and on the other we’re trying to create an optimal experience for the Facebook consumer. And so of course, there are short term things that people probably think that we do, but In terms of going after, you know, more revenue or showing more ads per session or, you know, charging more to advertisers, but what we understand the true value of, you know, we could be providing them, but we really stay focused on the long term, because we believe that in doing so we can create an increase the pie for everyone, you know, both for advertisers and the value that you get from it. But we also want people to come back using the service over and over and over again.
Unknown Speaker 5:27
Now, since this is a search conference, I figured people would enjoy seeing an auction equation. And so the Facebook auction is really made up of three components. So first, you have your advertiser bid. And so this is the bid for the event that you’ve selected as your optimization goal. Hopefully, it’s not clicks, but it could be landing page views, it could be conversions. And this is essentially the max that you’re willing to pay, it’s not necessarily what you’re going to actually pay. Because that amount actually is based on the action rate and the outcome of the equation after the auction does actually run. The next thing that we incorporate is this thing called the estimated action rate, which is essentially the likelihood that an impression that is served to a particular person will lead to the desired result that you’ve you’ve outlined above. Then we incorporate user value, which is essentially how interested do we think this individual is going to find this particular ad that we put in front of them, and also Is this a high quality ad an experience. And then so for every ad targeting a person, regardless of the type of bid or the objective it’s using, we calculate, essentially a total value in order to rank that particular ad against all of the other possible as that that person is eligible to receive, and the highest total value is going to win the auction for that person at that moment in time. And so all this is pretty straightforward. And there are a lot of things that can actually impact that estimated action rate. And a lot of the things that you know, Vila talked about the objectives that you actually choose the targeting parameters that you set up in even the account structure. But what we know is good creative will increase the action rate and decrease your costs. And bad creative will decrease those action rates, and ultimately increase the cost and the amount that you end up paying in the auction. So we know that creative creativity matters. But unfortunately for us, especially for folks who like to, you know, turn knobs and dials, there’s no silver bullet. And so there isn’t the same equation that I can give you that’s going to say, Hey, this is what spits out or delivers the most impactful grade of, but what we do know is that we can get better. And that more impactful performance creative can be achieved just by knowing the rules for building on the platform, by innovating with them. And then by knowing when to move outside of them and kind of color outside the lines, and you know, testing and learning to understand what works for your particular brand, or for your particular product or service. So how do we do that? First, it’s important to have a good foundation and start with mobile best practices that if you’ve heard someone from Facebook, give a presentation, you’ve probably heard these before. So the first is, you know, shorter in duration, all else being equal, typically is better. Six to 10 seconds tends to be the sweet spot for most high performing dr adds, but we’ve seen some longer ones performed well. And you know, by longer, I mean 15 seconds, not, you know, not two minutes, you want to design for sound off just in case the user has their phone on, you know, no volume mode, so maybe they’re on a bus, or you know, maybe they’re standing at the line at the store. But you want to delight with sound on because increasingly, we’re seeing that people are in a Leanback experience, and they’re laying on the couch. And that’s how they’re consuming their mobile content. And then finally, you want to frame your visual story in the right aspect ratio. And so in the newsfeed, what we recommend is one to one as a suggested ratio, which will allow the call to action and the by now or the Learn More button to be visible on the screen, as opposed to 916. And you’re also just taking up more visual real estate, and so more eye catching for the user themselves. So once you’ve done those basics, now it’s time for you to layer on these creative considerations that will actually help drive action and that we found to actually drive better performance through numerous studies. So you want to have a mix of video and static together, we find that that works better than either format alone, you want to highlight the brand early. Typically within the first three seconds, you want to showcase the product or service for the majority of the video, you want to get noticed using thumb stopping visual techniques. You want to provoke and promote with the text copy. And finally, you want to play around and play more with different formats. And so let’s go into each of these individually and show some examples of you know how this actually plays out.
Unknown Speaker 9:52
So static plus video, so we’ve done a lot of meta analysis, a lot of studies and then we did a meta analysis of about 5000 Conversion lifts study sells. And what we found is that Dr. campaigns that combined both video, and static ads had the highest conversion lift outcomes, compared to only static only for video only campaigns, implying that basically, the two formats either complement each other in some way in the messaging, or they attract different audiences, allowing you to drive better performance. This is an example from a beta. And what we see is that just by adding some simple, lightweight motion and text, they were able to clearly define the product benefits, again, in a thumb catching way that was ultimately more informative than the image the image alone. And what they found in this campaign was that it actually drove 22% increase in incremental sales. So what are some other ways to build motion into static image assets so that you can actually have a wider portfolio? Well, you can use basic motion and kind of play with the elements of the background that are drawn to the eye. Here are some examples from the Honest Company. And there are a lot of tools that allow you to do this easily. So even if you’re not a you know, a graphic expert, it can be a pretty low lift, you can also put the brand in motion starting with the brand logo. In this particular example. A lot of brands mess around or play around with putting the benefit in motion. And so this one is cycling through the different benefits to using honest diapers. And then the final one is demo and motion. So this is talking about how to order online by picking a size, how to fit prints, and then how to get it delivered to your door. And this one is really great for a product that’s either complex, or if you have a new brand new service where you really need to educate the consumer on what the offering is. Alright, so let’s move on to the second creative consideration, which is highlighting the brand early. What we found is that the brand Association within three seconds of a video start is positively correlated with conversion lift. And so some of the ways that you can do this in video are you can show a logo that has a recognizable spokesperson, recognizable colors, product or visuals, you can superimpose a logo over a portion of the video ad, which is different than having kind of a brand card at the front. Or you can reinforce your name and any of the captions, or superimpose text. Now let’s talk about showcasing the product. Again, from a lot of studies that we’ve done, what the data tells us is that if you are using video, the most of the video, you know in terms of the content should be showcasing the product or the service that’s being advertised similar to what you know john was saying before. And so some of the ways that you can do this are through showing multiple products or variants. So the first one is an example of buy Beats by Dre where they achieved a 29% increase in purchase lift going through different variations of the headphones. You can also highlight how the product can be used in a DIY kind of way or through step by step tutorials like in the second example from Pepsi. And then finally you can visually show what people would be buying for the majority of the video, especially at the beginning calling out like features or benefits almost solidifying it in like in this ad from Harry’s. Next is noticeability. And again, you’ve got people scrolling through again, you know a statues Liberty worth of content every day scrolling like this. What we also find is that the younger they are the faster they tend to scroll. And so the question becomes how can you stop these thumbs in newsfeed because we know that getting noticed and thumb stopping creative correlates again with higher dr performance. So here are a few tactics to consider when we think about stopping people in their newsfeed. This first example is about leading with shots of the hero product against a vivid background. You can see they’re using contrast and colors. And really putting this bag as the hero front and center. You can also use attention grabbing visuals. So this is Air Asia. And they use this kind of unique concept to stand out and fee they’re playing around with some creative conventions to really draw you as the viewer in and then it quickly transitioned to transition this to this full screen image with the very visible promotion. One note here is that you really want to avoid using thumbnails or images that are blurry. And you really want to focus on featuring people who are facing the viewer in the in the mobile device.
Unknown Speaker 14:28
Next you can also try captions and overlays to emphasize key messages. So the text over picture in this ad This is a add by sweat by Kayla really guides you as the viewer is asking you a question like what drives you? And then it showcases a different range of workouts based on your particular interests. And then finally, you want to consider using quick movements and fringes and transitions between scenes. We see these a lot from brands and advertisers. This is an example from fanatics and it really relies on Quick Change copy and there is persistent products that are obviously scrolling through. But that helps to that movement helps to draw in the audience as well. Next up is ad copy. And you know, for folks who are, you know, paid search practitioners, we’ve spent a lot of time optimizing search campaigns, and you know how important ad copy can be. And so we’ve done a lot of research both on the content and the consumers and how they use our products to learn really about their behavior and comprehension and how it can inform effectiveness. And so this is a little quiz, we’re not going to do this in real time, given the number of people on the line. But the question would be, does anyone know you know, where the eye goes first, when you typically look at an ad. And so what we find is, you know, obviously, this kind of makes sense, the video or the image first. But then what we find is people then go to the copy at the top, then they transition to the brand. And then finally, they go down to the comments. And so you want to make sure that you’re putting, you know, the most critical information in the video. But you also want to make sure that you’re reinforcing it with effective ad copy as well. And there are a few ways that you can do this, you can ask questions of the consumer to generate curiosity and interest, you can reinforce or highlight the promo or the call to action. One important note here is that to keep it short, and sweet, and so we found that keeping the text under 280 characters is associated with higher Dr. Lift, it may just be because you’re not overwhelming them. Maybe it’s just easier for them to tease out kind of what the core thing that you that you want them to do is but what we found is basically shorter, is better. And then finally, you want to be sure that you’re taking advantage of the full palette of ad formats and placements that are available to you. One thing that we know is that you can’t predict in advance where your next consumer is going to be. But if you have the right assets available, and you’ve opted in to as many placements as possible, you can let the algorithm do that for you. And so I think I feel as examples with stories and with the polling ads are really great examples of how you want to, you know, use as many different formats as possible to engage the audience. And to really draw them in. Another example are collection ads, you here, you see some examples here. So collections are a great way to combine video in shopping ads, essentially combining brand, and Dr to create emotion, you know, through sight, sound or motion, while also collapsing the funnel and driving action at the same time. So you can get them excited about whatever your product services, but then, you know, don’t make them wandering around about where they have to go or what to do next, make it easy for them to actually just go in and buy your product or service. And then again, if you’ve been to a Facebook presentation, in the last two years, you’ve likely heard us talk a lot about the rise of stories, and how much time is being spent in these environments. And so when it comes to testing Instagram stories, you know, we’re still learning a lot about what some of these best practices are, and what works specifically for performance campaigns. But again, we recommend using mixed formats, and adding stories to a placement OPT as optimization campaign. This is an example from hyak, the travel search company probably all very know well, which ran video ads both in Instagram stories, Instagram feed and Facebook newsfeed in one ad set using placement, acid customization. And they found that by combining ad formats, they were actually able to drive a 5x increase in overall conversions.
Unknown Speaker 18:48
So what’s the main takeaway? I think, you know, the one thing that we’re saying is, you know, you don’t have to abandon all of the direct response expertise and the best practices that you’ve developed. All those are important tools and skills that you have. What you want to do is take those skills and that know how it really adapted for mobile and adapted for the mobile world that we’re living in and create mobile first creative. And the good news is that all of these techniques and best practices are applicable, you know, on Facebook and Instagram, but they are applicable to Snapchat, a lot of them are applicable to Twitter, or to tik tok. And so, if you actually start building your your creative capability, and you start infusing them with these best practices, you’re going to see that the results and the impact are incorporated across all the marketing efforts that you do. So just as a recap, what are the key kind of Dr. Creative tactics that you want to make sure that you’re thinking about, again, using a mix of static and video, highlighting the brand early within those first three seconds, really making sure that you’re showcasing the product or the service? Using thumb stopping creative to get those thumb stopping, you want to provoke and promote with the ad copy. So don’t forget about the ad copy even though the image and the video are important. And then finally, you want to play a lot, play around and test and learn to see what actually works best for your brand. With that, I’ll be happy to take any questions. Great. Thank
Unknown Speaker 20:23
you so much, Jason. Good stuff, good examples. Um, we don’t have any questions queued up. I’ve got one, which is any special consideration for carousel ads?
Unknown Speaker 20:42
I think depends on your, you know, your strategy. Some people use carousel ads as a way to highlight complimentary products. And so you might think, hey, if I’m going to show, you know, let’s say, a shirt is kind of the hero product, I also want to share complimentary, you know, clothing or shoes that go along with it. Whereas some people will actually use, you know, carousel ads to actually kind of focus within a particular category. And so it’s, I have a belief that these consumers are interested in shoes, and I’m going to maybe show different variations to help, you know, identify the thing that’s going to be most interested to them. So I think it’s about how to how do you understand what your your campaign is objective is and then connect that back to the actual creative that you’re using.
Unknown Speaker 21:29
Gotcha. I also liked a lot the examples that showed what’s possible without necessarily having video assets. Any any sources or resources for how advertisers can find or can be inspired?
Unknown Speaker 21:51
Yeah, for sure. There, there are a lot of tools out there, I actually I get a lot of ads myself for apps that will allow you to take photos that you have or images that you have and add lightweight, you know, add lightweight motion, I know Adobe has a suite of products that allow you to do it, I would you know, just do a search and you’ll you’ll find a lot. And again, most of them aren’t very, aren’t very complicated. They’re pretty easy to use, and can get you up and running pretty quickly.
Unknown Speaker 22:21
Good. Um, I think I might have a couple more questions here except I can’t find them.
Unknown Speaker 22:34
Yeah, we’ve got one question from from OSHA. But he is working mainly on the performance side. And not on the creative side, he like he wants to learn how to guide the client to improvements, but it’s not in his best interests to do it himself. So any recommendations for him? Um,
Unknown Speaker 23:03
I think what I mean, what I would say is, you know, maybe if it’s, you know, it’s not his capability or his strings, or it’s not necessarily something that is profitable for him to do, you know, what we find, again, is, the better creative you have the better performance that you’re going to have, in terms of in terms of the campaigns. And so at the end of the day, if all he is responsible for is the media setup in an execution, if he’s not getting good creative, based on some of these best practices from his client, his performance is going to suffer, and the client may not understand why that is. And so I think these principles allow him to have a really will allow you to have a really thoughtful conversation with the client about, here’s what’s working, and here’s what’s not working, you know, here’s what’s not working. And even if you’re not going to be the one doing it, you can still make rep, you know, recommendations and help guide them in the ways that they should be thinking about it. And I think hopefully, what that will do is obviously not only improve the performance that you’re able to deliver, but hopefully, you know, the client is going to look at you more as a thought leader and a partner, and someone who understands that hey, like even though this isn’t specifically what I’ve asked him to do, he’s really helping me try to grow my business. And that will hopefully, you know, buy you some goodwill and strengthen the relationship in the partnership that you have with them.
Unknown Speaker 24:25
That’s what he wanted to know. Let’s see, I’ve got another question. Actually. I have a few people that are raising their hand, but I can’t see how to acknowledge them. So for those people, could you please type in your questions in the chat or the q&a?
Unknown Speaker 24:51
I think I see someone I’m not sure which ones.
Unknown Speaker 24:55
Okay, there’s several in the q&a. Um, This is a good question from Alex. What about b2b companies? Mainly software as a service? What are some suggestions for standing out on Facebook and Instagram?
Unknown Speaker 25:15
Yeah, so I think there are a few things there. In terms of what we see, you know, b2b advertisers do, I think helping to talk about innovation and thought leadership are a couple of the key strategies. I think it’s also important to understand like, where the target consumer is in their journey. And so, you know, are you doing a kind of a discovery campaign where you’re trying to source leads? Or are you retargeting people who are already familiar with your product and service? Because that, obviously, is going to inform the kind of messaging, you know, that you want to do. But I think, you know, obviously, most b2b sales are so it’s a longer sales lead. There’s more education that has to be done. And so it’s really how do you, you know, take some of our Bilas recommendations and make sure you marry the creative with the campaign objective and where the consumer is in their journey? I would say they, you know, they work both Well, on Facebook and Instagram, you know, the good thing about your target consumer is that they’re probably using one of those services. And so you can find them there. It’s just a matter of what message do you want to quit in front of them?
Unknown Speaker 26:34
Let’s see, do you recommend a separate ad sets to test different placements within Facebook ads manager? Usually,
Unknown Speaker 26:43
it depends not at first, I think it depends on, you know, the operational lift that, you know, in support that you have. Typically, what we would recommend is allowing the algorithm to really maximize across ad sets and campaigns and so but I won’t say that’s like that’s a given rule. Some, some advertisers find more performance by separating them. And so, you know, I think the recommendation here is that I would say, try to combine things as much as possible, as much as possible, but then test and learn and see if that actually is what works for your business.
Unknown Speaker 27:22
Gotcha. Okay, another question. Any advice for small businesses that want to stand out or compete with larger brands and bigger budgets? Yeah,
Unknown Speaker 27:35
again, I think that, you know, the thing here is these, you know, best practices apply to you know, whether or not you have a small hardware store, you know, or if you’re a big fortune 500 brand. I think, obviously, you know, you may not have the resources. And so taking advantage of, you know, some of those tactics that we talked about before in terms of free, you know, tools are going to be more helpful. I think also, this is also where you want to be smart with your targeting strategy in terms of making sure that you’re reaching, you know, the right audience. And so if you do have a local business or service, you know, how can you use geo targeting to your advantage to make sure that you’re hitting the right consumers? And then I think, finally, you know, what’s different or unique about the business that you have? And, you know, being a small business? How do you connect with the community on an, you know, on a deeper level, I think that the strategic advantage that you have, is, you know, more likely than not, you’re a part of that community. And so you understand the members of the community and what’s important to them. And so take advantage of that and connect to that both in the messaging and into the way that you’re trying to promote your brand new service.
Unknown Speaker 28:53
Gotcha. Good. Okay, last question. Although I’m going to save some for the for the panel discussions. Dawson was interested in the the mobile advice you had given? Kind of in that context, would you consider a long copy to be out of date or, or less useful? Hmm.
Unknown Speaker 29:24
Well, what we typically say is, you know, whether it’s the length of the video or the link of the copy is, you know, it, it should be as long as it needs to be but but as short as it can be. And so I think the biggest difference between consumer, you know, consumers today and engagement today is that people have much more attention spans are shorter. You know, as we talked about, people do, like, if you just watch people, you know, you know, at a sporting event, you know, like you used to be able to do or you know, on a plane or on a bus, people scroll really fast and so you have a couple Plus seconds to capture that attention. You don’t have someone just kind of sitting in front of a TV. Although some people obviously still do that or listening to the radio. And so the biggest difference is, you know, it has to be able to capture someone’s attention really quickly, or so moving on to whatever the, you know, the latest Tick Tock dances or some other posts that they’re seeing in their feed. And so that’s probably one of the biggest, biggest differences from, you know, creative into your creative how it used to be versus what it is today.
Unknown Speaker 30:29
Super. Thank you again, Jason. You did a great job. Appreciate it. For sure. And will you be around for the panel?
Unknown Speaker 30:40
Yeah, looking forward to it.
Unknown Speaker 30:41
Excellent. Good. Thank you.
Unknown Speaker 30:42
All right.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai