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Meta is Bringing Back Breakdowns for Conversion Reporting

What once was old is new again. After more than a year-and-a-half hiatus, Meta is bringing back breakdowns for conversion reporting.

This update follows a recent theme. After removing functionality in response to iOS 14 restrictions in 2021, Meta is beginning to bring them back. The return of breakdowns for conversions follows closely behind the Compare Attribution Settings feature and 28-day click attribution.

In this post, let’s clarify what Breakdowns are, what specifically went away, what’s back, and why it matters.

What are Breakdowns?

Breakdowns exist in both Ads Manager and Ad Reports, but for the purpose of simplicity let’s focus on Ads Manager.

Breakdowns allow you to take a single campaign, ad set, or ad and break down the results by a single segment. There are four categories of breakdowns: Time, Delivery, Action, and Dynamic Creative Element.

Facebook Ads Breakdowns

Let’s focus on the Delivery category since that’s what’s most impacted by this latest development. There are several ways you can break down your advertising…

Facebook Ads Breakdowns

There are a few more options below the scroll that aren’t picked up in this image.

Let’s say you use the Placement breakdown (admittedly my favorite). When you break down by placement, separate rows will be added to your reporting for each placement that received delivery. This helps advertisers understand, for example, how your advertising performed on Desktop Newsfeed, Facebook Stories, Instagram News Feed, and all the rest.

Facebook Ads Breakdowns

Whether it’s placement, country, age, gender, or something else, this can be incredibly enlightening.

What Went Away and Why?

When Apple announced the iOS 14+ changes related to opt-outs, Facebook made several adjustments in response. One of them was removing access to conversion data when running breakdowns.

Facebook Ads Breakdowns

This means that you could still perform a breakdown by placement, for example, but you wouldn’t get detailed segmentation for any conversion data. You’d only get it for the on-Facebook activity.

Facebook Ads Breakdowns

You’d get the summary row, but that’s it.

I don’t know that Meta has ever been incredibly clear about why this was. We can assume it has something to do with a lack of confidence in the data due to opt-outs. They may know, for example, that a conversion happened, but they are less sure about where.

What is Back?

Breakdowns for conversions are returning for the following (all fall under the “Delivery” category):

  • Age
  • Gender
  • Age and Gender
  • Country
  • Impression Device
  • Platform
  • Platform and Device
  • Placement

Facebook Ads Breakdowns

Here’s a quick video that walks through it.

@jonloomer Meta’s bringing back breakdowns for conversion reporting! #facebookads ♬ Hip Hop Background(814204) – Pavel

This, like every update, is a rollout. I only have it in one ad account, and it’s inactive. There’s been no official announcement from Meta (as far as I’ve seen), beyond messages from ad reps to advertisers.

Why Does it Matter?

These extra data points are so important. They provide necessary context.

Without split testing, you can quickly uncover which placements, ages, countries, and impression devices are performing the best. This might impact how you construct your campaigns going forward.

Loss of context has been significant since iOS changes. We are getting so much of that back with the return of Compare Attribution Settings, 28-day click attribution, and now breakdowns for conversions.

Your Turn

Do you have this yet? What do you think?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post Meta is Bringing Back Breakdowns for Conversion Reporting appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

Did you miss our previous article…
https://www.sydneysocialmediaservices.com/?p=3310

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Meta Brings Back 28-Day Click Attribution

Just in time for the holidays, Meta is bringing back 28-day click attribution.

This is some of the best news advertisers have received in a while. At the moment, though, I haven’t seen anything official from Meta on the reasoning behind it, the quality of that reporting, or what it means for the future of optimization and reporting.

So, for now, let’s discuss what has happened, how it impacts your advertising, and what it could mean.

The History of 28-Day Click

Prior to iOS 14 changes, Facebook used separate attribution windows (for reporting) and conversion windows (for optimization). One major change was the move to an Attribution Setting (for both optimization and reporting) and the removal of 28-day click.

While advertisers complain of a drop in performance since these changes, I believe the blame has been misplaced on iOS opt-outs. Aggregated Event Measurement should still find many of your prioritized events. The biggest change was the loss of the 28-day click window.

When 28-day click attribution existed, we’d often get questions about whether Facebook ads reporting was inflated. But once it went away, those questions moved to panic about conversions dropping.

And it makes sense. Especially for sales of products that may take longer than seven days to make a buying decision, there’s every reason to believe that advertisers have been hurt by these “lost” conversions.

The Return of 28-Day Click

It’s been an eventful week or so. Just a few days ago, Meta brought back the Compare Attribution Settings feature. And it’s with that feature that we now see the return of 28-day click.

Open the Columns drop-down in Ads Manager and scroll down to “Compare Attribution Settings.”

Compare Attribution Settings

That feature now looks like this…

Compare Attribution 28-day Click

You can add a column for 28-day click to view how many conversions happened in that window, regardless of your Attribution Setting.

Compare Attribution 28-day Click

Optimization vs. Reporting

Keep in mind, the addition of 28-day click is only for reporting. The default reporting is still based on your Attribution Setting, which is determined in the ad set. To see the 28-day click conversions, you’ll need to use the Compare Attribution Settings feature.

If you’re wondering, nothing has changed to Attribution Settings (yet, at least). There isn’t an option for 28-day click.

Facebook Ads Attribution

If there were, this would change how your ad set is optimized to include those who converted after 28 days of clicking.

How Can This Be?

Meta got rid of 28-day click for a reason. Presumably, various privacy changes have resulted in a lack of confidence in tracking beyond seven days. So, how could they bring it back now?

Well, there is no official statement from Meta on this, so I only have some assumptions. Keep in mind that originally the Attribution Setting was 7-day click only. Meta pulled way back initially. The company has said that modeling and machine learning have improved reporting.

It’s possible, if not likely, that Facebook has always had 28-day click reporting information during the past 18 months or so. And we also shouldn’t forget that not everyone is on an iOS device. Even if Meta is unable to attribute 28-day click conversions for users who opt-out on iOS devices (not known), there’s a world of potential conversions remaining.

It would seem, though, that privacy restrictions will only get tighter in the future. Meta must feel confident that those restrictions will not hinder 28-day click attribution or they wouldn’t have bothered bringing it back.

I would understand any cynicism related to the timing of this release. You may be able to uncover more conversions just in time for your holiday campaigns. This may alter your view of the performance of those efforts.

What You Should Do

This is where advanced advertisers will separate themselves from typical advertisers. Typical advertisers won’t even know this exists. Advanced advertisers will use this to uncover more conversions and show clients the relative success of their ads.

Do not be afraid to use this. Understand that the customer journey often takes longer than seven days after a click.

Watch Video

I also recorded this short video about the return of 28-day click. If you aren’t following me on TikTok yet, please do!

@jonloomer 28-day click attribution is back for Facebook ads! #facebookads ♬ Zodiac | Seamless Looping Trap Hip Hop Instrumental – xklbeats

Your Turn

Do you have this update? What do you think?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post Meta Brings Back 28-Day Click Attribution appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

Did you miss our previous article…
https://www.sydneysocialmediaservices.com/?p=3264

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Meta Shuts Down Facebook Podcasts

After a mere 10-month test, Meta is shutting down Facebook Podcasts (according to Bloomberg). You will no longer be able to add your podcast starting this week and the feature will be entirely shut down starting June 3.

I have a whole bunch of thoughts on this. Unfortunately, the test was so limited that most people (marketers and podcasters included) have no idea what this means.

I have a podcast (The Pubcast with Jon Loomer) and I’ve been testing Facebook Podcasts since October. While the impact has been limited due to the restricted nature of the test, I’m disappointed. I’m mostly disappointed by the enormous potential that will never be realized.

Allow me to explain what Facebook Podcasts are (soon-to-be “were”), how I used it, the results I saw, and the potential features that we’ll never see.

Explaining Facebook Podcasts

If anything is clear in the past 24 hours, it’s that there’s a deep misunderstanding of what Facebook Podcasting even was. The comments I’ve seen about it make that obvious.

Know that this wasn’t unique content that podcasters created for Facebook. There wasn’t functionality to record, edit, and publish your show. None of that was possible.

Instead, Facebook was merely a destination. You could hook up your podcast’s RSS feed to your Facebook page.

Authenticate Podcast for Facebook Page

Once it was set up, there was no extra work. When a new episode was detected in my show’s RSS feed, it would be published to my page (of course, only those in the US on mobile devices might see it).

Facebook Podcast Boost Unavailable

And there was a separate Podcast section of my Facebook page where episodes could be found and you could subscribe.

Facebook Page Podcast Section

Facebook was one of dozens of destinations where my show was published. When a new episode went live, it would go to Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Facebook, and a whole bunch of other places. In some cases, you set up a separate account to make sure platforms get your show. In others, they pick up your show automatically when it’s detected on other platforms.

A Limited Test

It’s quite possible that you never knew this existed. It was only available in the US and on mobile devices. As a result, I understood that when a new episode was published to Facebook, a very small percentage of my audience — those in the US, currently on mobile, chosen by the algorithm — would see it.

Since the test was so limited, a robust feature set never formed.

1. The metrics were close to nothing. You might see the number of listens next to the post for your episode, but that was really it. There was no access to how long people listened, how many listeners you had in aggregate, or the number of subscribers.

Facebook Podcast Listens

2. No advertising. You couldn’t promote individual episodes with ads (though I found a workaround that I experimented with). You couldn’t build your subscribers with ads. Nothing at all was available from the paid side.

What Should You Do Next?

One of the frustrating things for me about this news is that people keep asking me what I’m going to do next. Ummmm… Be disappointed?

My reaction would be the same if Spotify shut down. There’s really not much I can “do.”

Of course, if you weren’t previously publishing your show to many different destinations, that’s something you should do. But, if you’re like me, you were already doing that. My show is everywhere. It just won’t be on Facebook now.

Impact to My Numbers

As already described, this is difficult to measure because Facebook provided close to nothing related to number of subscribers or depth of engagement. It was nothing like video engagement metrics, for example. These stats simply didn’t exist.

The only thing I do have is the number of downloads to Facebook. I get this from Libsyn, which is my podcast host. Based on these numbers, about 4-percent of my downloads in 2022 have been on Facebook.

Downloads don’t mean a whole lot in the podcasting world, of course. We care more about engaged listeners, and I have no idea what that number is.

While 4-percent doesn’t feel like much, what if you lost 4-percent of your traffic? Or revenue? Obviously, these aren’t good things.

But, honestly, I keep saying it… The loss here is less about “actual” loss and more about “what could have been.”

What Could Have Been?

The irony here is that on the day this news came out from Bloomberg, I published a podcast episode about the features Meta needs for Facebook Podcasts. Actually, go ahead and listen here (it’s short!).

I can’t help but think about the features that could have made this amazing for podcasters.

1. Campaigns Made for Facebook Podcasts.

Imagine creating a campaign with the objective of promoting your Facebook Podcast. You could optimize for more listens or more subscribers. And at that point, Facebook should know who listens and who doesn’t, which would assist the optimization process.

There could also be completely new ad formats for podcasts. You could showcase individual episodes or the show itself. It could have been amazing.

2. Targeting options.

We could have created a custom audience of those who were subscribed to our podcast. This would allow us to target those who were already listening, and maybe promote something related to what you talked about on the show.

Maybe we could have created podcast custom audiences similar to video view custom audiences. So, create audiences based on the episode someone heard or how long they listened. Or maybe even an audience for people who have listened to any episode in the past.

It could have been really interesting. But it’s not going to happen.

Why Did This Happen?

This obviously bums me out, but I realize I’m part of a very small audience who cares.

Ultimately, there could be any number of reasons that Meta abandoned podcasting. It could be that they just weren’t seeing results (but, again, Meta invested so little into this and made it available to so few, that this is a tough argument).

More likely, it’s that Meta wants to dedicate more resources toward the Metaverse and short-form video. Awesome, I guess.

Watch Video

I recorded my thoughts in a video as well. You can watch it below…

Your Turn

What do you think about this change? Does it impact you?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post Meta Shuts Down Facebook Podcasts appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

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