Case study: Is a Facebook bot better than us marketers?

In this case study, we will focus on the performance and impact of a fully automated Advantage+ campaign on Facebook for a foreign client whose fashion brands Lee Cooper and TIMEOUT are part of our PPC management. Here, we will compare the given Advantage+ campaign with verified practices of marketers - whether it is DABU, lookalike audience or targeting according to interests.
The observation period is from 1/2/2023 to 31/5/2023 and the location is the Czech Republic.

About the client

The Romanian client MONTECRISTO RETAIL ro, which manages the fashion brands KVL by KENVELO, Lee Cooper, MONTECRISOT and TIMEOUT within Central Europe, operates over 25 brick-and-mortar branches in the Czech Republic alone. From September 2022, we help the client with effective online marketing within the Czech, Slovak, Romanian and Hungarian markets.

Target

Maximizing market turnover with a predetermined PNO value and following up on increasing brand awareness on Facebook and Instagram.

Problematics

We started all over again, no history, no data. Once the client and I had set up the measurement and fine-tuned the customer journey from ad click to payment, we launched into guaranteed tactics with a new pixel in mind: DABA and interest groups targeting the transition to payment. When Pixel received enough real-world purchases, we switched to sharp conversion targeting and started using lookalike audiences as well. Although the conversions were already flowing after the first weeks, we were still not completely satisfied with the given results, both with the number itself and with the price per conversion. For this reason, we agreed with the client to set up a discount code purely for these channels. Thanks to this step, we adequately reduced the cost per acquisition, but the conversion growth itself did not grow as expected.

Solution

Thanks to repeated consultations with the account manager, we managed to make available a new type of campaign: Advantage+ campaign, which was not yet available for the Ad Manager in question.

And the launch result? Already in the first week, each Advantage+ campaign (one for each brand) was able to bring in about 450 % more purchases than all proven practices combined, at almost the same cost per acquisition and with unchanged underlying. It should be noted that with the launch of the Advantage+ campaign, we suspended all other types of campaigns in order to avoid cannibalization and unnecessary price increases for individual acquisitions. The results were so good that we reduced the discount after an agreement with the client. However, this step did not in any way affect the success of the given campaigns, which we subsequently only filled with sufficient documents.

Q&A

Will an Advantage+ campaign work for every client?

Definitely not. We subsequently tested the Advantage+ campaign with almost all clients for whom we manage ppc on social networks. In the first days, the campaign achieved very strong results compared to DABA or other campaigns, but after a while the campaign began to cannibalize all broad campaigns and at the same time across the entire account increased the price per acquisition, thus also the entire value of PNO. It must be added that the tests were conducted on well-established accounts where we could not afford to turn off the other campaigns and leave only Advantage+ running.

Furthermore, we do not recommend classifying the Advantage+ campaign among B2B clients, for whom relevant targeting and control over the documents are essential.

How long to observe the Advantage+ campaign?

We always tested for about 14 days with a budget similar to or slightly smaller than the largest acquisition campaign in the account. For this period, it is important to have as much background as possible in the Advatage+ campaign, not to rely purely on DPA, but also to include banners and, in the best case, Reels.

Is it appropriate to reactivate DABU or other campaigns when the Advantage+ campaign is successful?

During the 14-day test, we found that the subsequent launch of other types of campaigns just always increases the price per acquisition across the entire account and cannibalization occurs.

Glossary of terms

Advantage+ campaign

Advantage+ Campaign simplifies the ad creation process by taking care of creative variations and targeting. Just select your campaign dates and budget, upload your creative, and Meta's machine learning-based system will take care of the rest. Instead of manually testing multiple campaigns and analyzing targeting, creative, placement and budget separately, advertisers can now more quickly and efficiently create up to 150 creative combinations simultaneously within a single Advantage+ shopping campaign.

DABA

Dynamic Ads for Broad Audience, or DABA, is Facebook's recommended targeting of a broader audience, excluding existing customers only.

Lookalike audience

Lookalike audiences represent an imaginary cast of people who have interacted with a specific brand (purchase, add to cart, etc.)