Digital Horizons
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Digital Horizons
Brand News: YouTube Shorts and Facebook Insights
Unlock the secrets to maximizing your brand's impact in the ever-evolving world of digital advertising. Learn how YouTube's latest tools are revolutionizing the way brands engage with creator content and Shorts ads, capturing a unique 40% of viewers who aren't on TikTok or Instagram. This episode offers a deep dive into the innovative strategies that can help advertisers harness the power of YouTube Shorts, turning them into a more effective and budget-friendly channel to drive business growth. Discover the art of syncing creator content with advertising efforts and how it can transform your marketing approach.
As we gaze into the crystal ball of 2024, Facebook emerges as a powerhouse with improved metrics and reduced costs, making it a bedrock for advertisers seeking reliable performance. Our conversation navigates the impressive resurgence of Facebook ads, exploring how AI-driven tools like Advantage Plus Audiences are transforming the landscape. With insights on integrating Facebook into a broader marketing strategy that includes SEO and search ads, this episode is packed with data-driven revelations that promise to enhance your marketing efficiency and elevate your brand in the digital space.
The Digital Horizons Podcast is hosted by:
James Walker - Managing Director WHD
Brian Hastings - Managing Director Nous
Welcome back to Digital Horizons In our brand new segment. Today we are talking about an article that was published in Search Engine Land, and what this article was focusing on is YouTube unveiling new tools to help brands tap into creator content and shorts ads, the stat that I was most impressed with. So YouTubeorts now account for 40% of YouTube viewers, who don't use TikTok or Instagram.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a huge audience that you aren't going to get an overlap with in those two other platforms. That is available right for the picking in relatively low cost YouTube ad platforms 100%.
Speaker 1:And also I guess they're really focusing on the ad platform. I know from our experience Shorts has always been a bit of a challenge because of the lack of ability to really run campaigns specifically on this channel because it's always built into other objectives, so you're running in a PMAX or other areas. So they really are going to be focusing on making this more of an advertiser-friendly channel to help you achieve business growth goals.
Speaker 2:One of the key benefits I see here is the connection with the creator content that has been developed for shorts by other creators but tagged your brand. If they're reviewing your product or they've been paid to do so, you as an advertiser can leverage that creator's content and pay to promote it within this sync up of the creator content with the advertiser. I'm not exactly certain of how easy it's going to be, but from the screenshot here, it's got multiple different creator videos that you can just select and advertise, pay to promote. It kind of sounds like what TikTok shop is going to be like in connecting the content directly with the product, except TikTok Shop is going to allow you to check it out.
Speaker 2:Yes, Okay, our second article for today staying in the social media vein, this one's also on Search Engine Land. Not that we've been lazy in finding our news for this week, but there's some great content on Search Engine Land and they really get to the point. Facebook ads 2024 data clicks and conversions up costs down. Facebook's stable ad performance and improving metrics offers advertisers a cost-effective and reliable platform to reach engaged audience. It does sound like a bit of a PR piece from Meta, but the stats don't lie.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I mean it's also reflective in our campaigns.
Speaker 1:There was a period where we really struggled In terms of getting consistency during that period where I think it was that Cambridge Analytica thing that happened quite a few years back, and there was all the pixel stuff and then Apple decided to get rid of all the cookies and there was all these things that happened, which made running campaigns on Facebook much more harder to get consistent results, whereas Google, I felt throughout, has always been quite consistent, though the cost keeps going up.
Speaker 1:I mean we're fucking paying CPC so much higher than what we were before, but Facebook's performance it's been, now it's got quite consistent, though the cost keeps going up. Like I mean we're fucking paying cbc so much higher than what we were before, but facebook's performance it's been, it's been, now it's got quite consistent. Yeah, and we're really seeing it, really finding it, and some of these stats on here are really cool, like. So the data from wordstream, and this is looking at 2024 average cost per click for lead campaigns $1.88 down from $1.92. Average conversion rate for lead campaigns 8.78 from 825. An average cost per lead 21.98 down from 23.10.
Speaker 2:And while these movements might not seem huge, if you're just looking at one campaign, this is across a lot of data so it's pretty significant.
Speaker 1:And when you're spending a lot of money on these platforms, that difference between $23 to $21, like I mean that's still pretty it's going to have an impact on your overall marketing efficiency.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think the reason they're saying this improvement has been experienced by advertisers is for the following reasons there's the adoption of AI-driven tools like Advantage Plus Audiences. Leveraging AI-powered creative tools to help create more visually appealing ads, which is improving the click-through rate. Util utilizing Facebook ads conversion API to track offline conversions, which would be a big one on that cost per acquisition. They're tracking more of the conversions led by Facebook. And then also having Facebook as a part of a broader marketing strategy, including other social platforms, seo and search ads, so working together as a part of the bigger piece of the pie.
Speaker 1:Have you been an ads manager in time recently?
Speaker 2:Yeah, my performance team has gone on holiday, so I've had to jump in there and have a look.
Speaker 1:Okay, so something that I've been finding recently is that the amount of stuff you've got to turn off in there when you're just trying to get a campaign built is ridiculous. Like you're like, all right, cool, you know what you want to do. You want to get your campaign set up, you want to try and do it quickly and you've gone through all these things and first you've got to unhide a whole bunch of settings just to be able to do what you want to do on the platform.
Speaker 1:But then there's all this automatic shit that keeps is kind of fine, but then they've got like all this stuff, like what they're talking about here in terms of their AI-generated, like powered creative tools, and it just basically has that by default sometimes turned on.
Speaker 1:That's happened to us, actually, and it's just messing up your ads and making it look different to what you want it to be, and then adding site links, and there's all these different little buttons that you've just got to go so carefully through to make sure that what your actual ad on this platform is being shown to people is what you want it to be, because they just make it like trying to change it on you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and our clients don't comprehend how that could happen. So when they see a kind of distorted, weird ad and we say, oh, facebook just made that up, it sounds unbelievable. Yeah, it is, but yeah, it's happened to us. And we're saying to our clients, oh, they're making these changes in the management tool so that you're having to go back and turn these things off continuously. And to the client it's like well, that's not good enough. You know, I pay you for this. Yeah, they're just making it quite difficult to have the campaign run as you imagine, or?
Speaker 1:what you plan, it just makes it such a longer process. Like, as you imagine or plan, it just makes it such a longer process. Like my team are smashed coming up to Black Friday, obviously, and so I often give them a hand. So I'm jumping in there and I'm just like hold on. This is way longer.
Speaker 1:This is taking way longer than I want just because I've got to keep turning all this stuff off all the time and so, yeah, a bit frustrating, but it's offering there that you've got to turn off, just stuff like that. I feel we're going to be testing the new year and see how it actually impacts performance of the campaigns.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but it's a bit of a pain from Facebook automatically turning them on for us.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:But let's see how they go in the new year.
Speaker 1:Thanks for listening to my rant about Facebook's ad platform problems.
Speaker 2:But thanks for watching today. Yeah, that's the brand news as part of Digital Horizons. We'll be back next week.