🐇Rabbbits Weeekly: Ad targeting gone wild! Hilarious news inside 🕳️
Stay ahead of the game with the latest ad targeting options on Pinterest and Facebook. Plus, headlines. And goblin mode.
*Subject line and part of the subtitle were generated by ChatGPT.
We’re almost there, the year has almost ended. So here’s the plan: I’m aiming to close out 2022 with round ups of trends and predictions and some opinion stuff (more than usual, bet you’re excited). And maybe the last week will be an “and now for something completely different” type thing.
This weeek: targeting on Pinterest, Meta dusts off its ad platform features list plan, and some headlines about ads, retail, audiences, analytics, algorithms, and attack vectors. And goblin mode.
Pinterest Targeting Playbook
If you run ads on Pinterest, your targeting options are:
Interests
Keywords
Retargeting
Lookalike
Customer Lists
Robots!
That last one isn't targeting robots (I think), but using robots to do lots of fancy statistical analysis for targeting purposes.
I'm most interested in the first two because of how they interact. And keywords are fairly unique in the world of social ad platforms.
Interests are what you'd expect, interests users express via their on-platform behavior (and conceivably off-platform if sites have Pinterest pixels installed, etc etc). The platform may not have as many as Facebook, but the interface to select them is much better. There aren't any hidden interests and the ones they do have niche down pretty far. For example, do you want to target people interested in "Home Decor Style" or "Country Farmhouse Decor"?
Keywords function basically just like Google Ads, or other search engine ad platforms. Including match type modifiers.
There are two placements on Pinterest: Browse and Search.
Browse is the home and Related Pins feeds. Search-less scrolling, if you will.
Search is, well, search.
I oversimplify the targeting types as:
Interests are for Browse
Keywords are for Search
When users are browsing, Pinterest wants to show them more of what they've been interested in historically.
When they're searching, Pinterest wants to show them what they are expressing interest in in that moment.
Interest targeting can deliver in Search, but reading between the lines of a chat with my Pinterest rep makes me think you are at the back of the line waiting for your keyword competitors to filter through the auction system. You're waiting on the scraps.
There is also a checkbox in the Interest and Keyword targeting section to "Enable expanded targeting." This uses your Pin image, title, and description to add to the explicit targeting options you set. Useful to cover all your bases. But keep it in mind if you're trying to microtarget or need to reduce competitive overlap between similar brands or products.
Meta Updates
I think Zuck’s League of Sauron got too distracted by the metaverse dreams and the like because some of the new features they recently rolled out for advertisers feel like they should have been done a long time ago. Guess this is what happens when you have to focus on making money again.
First up…
Lead Forms Get A Facelift
Facebook lead ads are a great tool if they fit your business goals. Now they're finally getting better. What's changing?
Pre-Qualify Leads
Add a custom multiple choice question that will categorize the user as a lead or not a lead based on their answer. Users whose answer keeps the in the lead bucket get to continue through the form like usual. If they answer a "not a lead" answer then they get sent to a custom completion screen and can't fill out the rest of the form. As of now you can only use one filtering question per form and it must be the first question.
You create one completion screen for each lead bucket with a headline, description, and call to action button (so basically the garden variety end screen, you just create two depending on if they finished the form or not).
More Calls to Action
After a form is filled out you have a choose-your-own-adventure set of options to finish it off with:
Send users to a link
Get them to give you a call
Give them direct access to a file
The link option is the standard, but maybe you want them to do something else. You can drop a phone number in and encourage them to call you without leaving the app (or the form). Or, and this is the most interesting one to me, you can use the form as a content gate and let them download a JPEG, PNG, or PDF straight from the form. (And yes, these options are available with the lead filter feature.)
Go Crazy With Custom
Not content to be basic? Good news, now you can go custom.
According to Big Blue, this option allows you to "tell your brand's story with rich context, visuals and customizable sections."
Here's a list of the options, click through on the link above to see visuals and get a better feel for it:
Add a cover image
Set a color scheme
Write a headline
Add an overview and a list of (up to 3) benefits, if you want
Add (optional) sections for How it works, Products, Social proof, and Incentives
And voilà, you now have something that looks a lot more like a landing page than a standard Facebook form.
*These are slowly rolling out so your account may not have access yet.
Instagram’s New Ad Targeting Option
Meta just rolled out a shiny new ad targeting option, you can now deliver ads to your Instagram followers! How are they just getting around to adding this now?
Headlines
Ads
Meta may have to stop running personalized ads in the EU. This could be a big blow to first-party data advertising in the bloc as the ban excludes targeting users based on things like “the Instagram reels they've viewed or Facebook profiles they've clicked.” So how else will ads be targeted? And will anyone enjoy that experience?
Retail Tea Leaves
Amazon started messing around with video on mobile search results a while back, but now it’s going full feed. Aimed at TikTok, the new feed sounds more like a mix The Clock App, Instaglam, and Pinterest. Get inspired to shop via a feed to photos and short-form videos. Social may be dying, but content and discovery is alive and well.
The .99¢ hack says that consumers see a price ending with 9 as much cheaper than the number ending in 0 one penny higher, even if it is only a penny difference. But is this the best way in all cases?
No.
This research disproves the myth that odd termination is effective for products of all types and prices, as the impact of prices ending in nine in brands with better market positioning, is greater.
Premium products benefit from having a round number price ending in 0. It can even impart a sense of scarcity.
For the category of kitchen towels, this means that a strong brand decreases the impact of finished prices when compared to other competitors. In five of the six presented brands, the preference share is greater for the prices ending in nine, compared to the closest price ending in zero, which confirms the benefit of presenting prices ending in nine for the case of mass market brands. On the other hand, in a premium perceived brand like Apple, that values exclusivity and design, an increase in price generated an increase in share, so the higher price ending in zero, presented better results, both in preference and in revenue.
Audiences
Perhaps companies like Amazon are paying users for the personal data firehose because the people that won’t go for it are actively lying about their personal info (hi it’s me I’m the problem it’s me). This is a good reminder that no one is waiting for your brand email to hit their inbox. You have to earn it, every time.
The Women’s 2022 Podcast Report has dropped and the it finds that listenership is getting more female. 48% female to be exact, up from 44% a few years back. And as for specifics:
As we see with podcast listeners overall, women monthly podcast listeners stand out from total U.S. women ages 18+. They are:
Younger (48% more likely to be ages 18-34)
More likely to be in the workforce (47% more likely to be employed full time)
Higher income (36% more likely to have household income of $100k or more)
Highly educated (22% more likely to have a college degree)
More likely to be Moms (33% more likely to have children under 18)
Analytics
Google Analytics 4 now has behavioral modeling for realtime reporting. So if a user declines analytics cookies, Google will “model” their behavior based on similar users that have accepted cookies. Which, yes, means algorithmically guess.
It’s a common client question, “what does our SEO say we should write about?” (It’s not worded like that, but hopefully you get the idea.) Google Search Console may answer that for us soon. Some users are seeing a new tab in GSC called “content ideas,” which shows topics they could write about.
Algorithms
Want more people to see your Snaps? Get Snapchat+, they’re adding a post boost feature for subscribers. This could be an interesting way to advertise without “running ads.” Twitter Blue subscribers get similar priority, so this could be the new trend to get people to pay up. Gotta replace that missing ad revenue somehow.
Microsoft (like Elon and Zuck) wants to create a one-stop-shop super app as a response to the Apple-Google phone duopoly. The vision is the toss a bunch of their consumer-ready products into a pot to “combine shopping, messaging, web search, news feeds and other services.” I’m bearish on super apps in the West, but Microsoft has an advantage over the social players. Corporate users are already used to existing in a Microsoft ecosystem, maybe enough will adopt the super app to give it a chance. (Paywall, Recap)
Attack Vectors
Your ad selling furniture or featuring a picture of a building may get flagged by Facebook for some off-the-wall reason, but try to run an ad threatening election workers and it’ll probably be approved. The platform once again failed an election ad related test. YouTube and TikTok, meanwhile, removed all offending test ads.
Amazon’s Shopper Panel consumer research program will now pay you $2 per month to route all your web traffic via its servers. This allows the retail giant to verify “the ads [you] see from Amazon’s own advertising or third-party businesses that advertise through Amazon Ads.” It’s a data goldmine for advertisers and a privacy nightmare for users.
It gives Amazon insight into how users behave after seeing ads and can fill the tracking gap in view-through conversions. But it also means every web request the user makes pings the Amazon server. Facebook used a program like this to figure out what competitors to try to buy or squash.
Rackspace’s Hosted Exchange service (a Microsoft email thing) was targeted by a ransomware attack.
Alternates & Assorteds
Goblin Mode is the new metaverse.