The day in Dublin started with a spectacular opening at Meta EMEA headquarters. Various speakers on stage delved deeper into, among other things, the importance of strong creatives. The importance of more and extensive testing was also emphasized. After a delicious lunch, break out sessions in smaller groups were scheduled. These break out sessions focused on various topics, the highlights of which, of course, we don't want to keep to ourselves.

Test & Learn

Creatives are becoming increasingly important in e-commerce. Maybe even the most important. It is therefore very important to keep testing and learn from this. In addition, Meta states:”To increase the ROI, you have to test & learn.”  

The test & learn phases were described as follows:

1. Understanding business goals and determining how success is measured;
2. Create a “learning agenda” with clear hypotheses and identify appropriate campaigns for the test;
3. Create test creatives & choose the right measurement solution for each hypothesis with your campaign objectives and creatives in mind;
4. Run the test, implement the learnings, and then repeat another test.

The importance of testing was highlighted again during this breakout session. We were well aware that we are already using this test & learn cycle for several customers according to the above four steps to optimize the campaigns. If this does not apply to you yet, we recommend that you set up a clear test & learn cycle and write out the 4 phases per test.

Incrementality testing

What does incrementality testing actually mean? In Dutch, we call this effect measurement.

When analyzing a social campaign, determining the actual value is not always easy, because all your other marketing campaigns on the same target group can also influence this value. Think of Display and/or YouTube. To determine the independent real value of the campaign, you need to calculate the impact on your business and all other channels that influence the target group. This part is called effect measurement.

To actually achieve an effect measurement, you must set up an improvement test. Please note: an improvement test is not the same as an a/b test. An a/b test does not use random control groups that intentionally exclude a group from your campaign. In an improvement test, you compare the group that did have the opportunity to see the ad with the group that didn't. The results provide insight into the direct impact on your goals. We would like to make another comment: to carry out a good improvement test, a relatively large budget is needed.

“Sustained duration: campaigns lasting 45+ days drive higher brand lift.”

Brand awareness | Brand building

What setup is most effective for brand awareness and brand building? Which channels do you use and which not? This is what we are also constantly asking ourselves. Fortunately, Meta had an answer to this. The University of Oxford has done a major academic study into the effectiveness of Brand Building. This resulted in the three most important factors that stimulate brand awareness:

1. Always use a media mix for best results;
2. Mediamix diversity is key and not one channel should dominate;
3. Most campaigns could have more effect by spending less on TV.

Point 3, in particular, is interesting to consider. This is because this is a current topic within Brand building. During a branding campaign, from the study above, it is therefore important to look at the budget distribution of TV and the social phase.

“Attention: People scroll through an average of 500 meters of content a day and spend 1.7 seconds on content.”

Creative briefing + Ad creating

During this Ashley Vinson session, it became creative process and the importance of a strong creative briefing emphasized.

As Meta's algorithm grows stronger and stronger, it is increasingly easier to reach the right target group within the Meta platforms. Competition continues to rise, making it harder to stand out in your target group's timeline. That's why creatives are the way to reach your target group. A remarkable creative or unique video contributes to this.

It's important to think about your creative briefing beforehand and to develop different creatives for different placements. This way, you can tailor each creative to the respective placement. A story creative is simply different from a feed creative, but a reels creative also has different requirements.

What did we think of it?

It was a very interesting and relevant event. It's cool to get so many new insights and also get new inspiration. We have gained a lot of concrete learnings that we can apply to our customers directly with Yellowgrape. In addition, it was nice to get confirmation that we are doing well in many areas and are already applying many of Meta's best practices within our own customer portfolio.

Want to know more about the latest developments at Meta? Contact us!