We did something different and Jon invited Luke in to discuss several important topics. During this episode they talk about:

• Facebook scams (why does this keep happening??)
• Advertisers getting shut down
• Does Facebook care about exploited weaknesses?
• Why don't these options exist?
• What's up with these weird ads coming from Facebook's Facebook page?

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If you advertise for a Special Ad Category (housing, credit, employment, politics), Special Ad Audiences are going away. Here's a breakdown regarding what this means, the dates you need to be aware of, and what to do next.

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Meta has released a series of new B2B targeting options to allow you to reach business decision makers and admins of new businesses. Here's how it works.

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You've likely seen a new feature that allows you to make up to three different creative optimizations of your Facebook ad. This isn't scary. It's Advantage+ Creative, and here's how it works...

If you sell a product on Amazon or another third-party site, the struggle is real with advertising. You can't remarket to people who clicked on your ad. Your optimization options aren't ideal.

But, Meta has something they could do that, while it wouldn't solve every problem for this group, it would make things better. I explain on this episode.

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If you're optimizing your Facebook ads for ThruPlay and you're getting results that are just too good to be true, they probably are. And I will be that it's related to the Audience Network Rewarded Video placement.

Here, I walk through what ThruPlay is, how I spotted a problem with my campaign, and the weaknesses of this placement and Facebook ads optimization in general.

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This episode is going to be a little (or a lot) different than most. Not about Facebook ads. This is about balancing the million and one things you're doing both in and outside of work. It's about the guilt and shame of not doing it all. And it's about forgiveness and being kind to yourself...

Meta announced several new features that are either being tested or coming soon to your lead forms. While not a ton of details were provided, there is plenty that we can talk about...

Meta announced a bunch of new features recently related to messaging and lead generation. One that got my attention was the ability to send marketing messages to people who opt-in via Messenger in Meta Business Suite. This could be really interesting...

One of the most common refrains from marketers when a feature gets taken away or a platform gets shut down is "This is why you don't build your house on rented land!" While there's certainly some thread of truth here, it's a phrase that is so misused and overused that it loses all meaning. Here's a rant...

While you can make use of the Search placement, wouldn't it be nice to be able to bid against certain search terms when people use Facebook search?

The truth is that this existed at one time, but it was a buried template that most advertisers never knew about it. But, it would be so helpful if this was brought back in some way. Let me explain...

I've complained a lot during the past year about how little advertisers know about how much their targeting audience was expanded or how many results came from the expansion of their audience when Detailed Targeting Expansion or Lookalike Expansion is on. But, what if Meta added an Expansion option to the current Breakdowns feature that allowed you to break down your results and view separate rows for your targeted audience and the expanded audience?

Previously, we discussed the need for some sort of frequency control lever when optimizing for something other than Reach. But, there could be another option that would involve creating custom audiences based on people who have seen a specific ad. This could then be used for frequency control (exclusions) and campaign planning.

One of the issues advertisers struggle with most is controlling frequency. Currently, the only way to set a frequency cap within the Auction buying type is with Reach optimization. While there's surely a reason for this, it sure would be nice to have some sort of control over frequency using other optimization options.

Facebook Podcasts still haven't been fully rolled out, and there are rumors that Meta may change course on its investment. But, the addition of a few advertising options could make Facebook Podcasting an amazing opportunity.

Right now, you can target people who have viewed your videos for a certain amount of time. And optimization can focus on those who watched at least 15 seconds of your videos. But, both targeting and optimization would improve if Meta included some very important options.

Imagine you could target all people who followed your page during the past 30 days. Maybe send them a special message or invite them to subscribe to something. That may be valuable, right? You can't do it right now.

You can use Page Engagement Audiences to target anyone who has engaged with your page or anyone who has engaged with your page's posts or ads. But, what if we could add some granularity to that targeting?

Can you imagine if Meta offered standard events for actions that reflect quality website traffic? You could then optimize for and measure quality traffic actions like viewing two pages in a session, spending at least a minute on your page, or returning for a second session. You could then even target people based on these actions.

This one enhancement would drastically change my advertising, and maybe yours. Right now, the focus is to get you the most link clicks, landing page views, or engagement at the lowest cost. But, what if you could instead optimize for quality actions that have more value?

I'm not the only one who wants this, right? Meta undoubtedly has this information. Why can't we see how many conversions resulted from someone seeing or clicking our post or ad, regardless of whether we paid to reach them? There would be some helpful ways to do this...

A week ago, I published my 150th episode in 150 days. As difficult as it was to stop, it was time. I learned a ton from those 150 episodes, and now I'm going to pivot off of what I learned. Here's what to expect in the next phase...

This is it! It's the big one! The 150th episode in 150 days. Is the streak over? What did I learn from it? I discuss what I learned, what you might apply, and what it all means...

With the announcement of Meta Advantage products, it's obvious that the trend is towards more automation. Why am I concerned about this? I have a few reasons...

Are there times when you should use Facebook lead ads with Instant Forms instead of sending people to a landing page on your website to collect a lead? I provide some thoughts...

Lately, I've started realizing more and more posts from pages that I don't follow -- that aren't ads -- in my news feed. I decided to dig deeper and perform a little experiment. Here's how my news feed breaks down and what we can learn from it...

I've actually talked before about two of the primary benefits of getting your domain verified related to Facebook ads and posts, but there are actually several more reasons to get this process completed.

I get it. There are seemingly limitless options and features when running a Facebook ads campaign. Where do you start? How do you set up your campaign? What metrics do you care about? Keep it simple...

First there was Detailed Targeting Expansion. Then Lookalike Expansion. It looks like Facebook is also considering Custom Audience Expansion. At least, I can tell you my ad account has been selected for a study to test just that.

I decided to do a Pubcast version of my 5 Facebook Ads Tips webinar, and oh... there's a story here.

Questions were raised recently about the accuracy of Facebook interests used for targeting, thanks to a NCSU study. You may start asking those questions yourself if you dig into your ad preferences to see some of the ways that advertisers can target you.

Researchers in a recent North Carolina State University study found that more than 30% of the interests Facebook connected to a user, which could be used for targeting, were inaccurate or irrelevant. In many cases, it was because the process that led Facebook to infer an interest lacked important context.

There's a ton going on in the world of Facebook and Meta advertising, so how do you stay on top of it all? There are three main things that I recommend.

There are plenty of good business reasons for merging Facebook business pages. There are also several obstacles to doing it. Some of these you can correct and some you can't.

Facebook is going to start punishing video posts that utilize "watchbait" by withholding important information, using sensationalized language, and misleading the viewer. So, why am I skeptical?

Do you use the word 'Meta' when referring to the family of apps related to Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger? I've had a bit of a personal protest against the change. Here's my old man rant on why it's been so hard for me to say 'Meta.'

Earlier, I published a Shot about the basics of Meta Advantage. But, this topic deserves more attention. Here, I dig into precisely what this means -- not only now, but potentially for the future. And I have my concerns.

How much should you spend on Facebook ads? I get asked this a lot. There isn't a simple answer, but there are several factors to consider when determining how much you need to spend to get the results you want.

Facebook (or Meta) just announced that it is renaming its ad automation tools Meta Advantage. Does that mean new features and functionality are coming? What does it mean for the future of advertising optimization and automation?

One of the biggest challenges Facebook advertisers face is scaling. You can get great initial results, but either they don't last or everything collapses when you increase the budget. There are four strategies to try, depending on your business, to effectively scale.

Within custom Facebook ad reports, you can choose to have regular emails sent (daily, weekly, or monthly) with your saved report to specific members of your team. Here's how...

I've long complained about how Facebook removed the Compare Attribution feature from Ads Manager during the iOS 14+ changes of 2021. Well, it turns out that a workaround still exists -- though it's strangely buried in a way that makes little sense.

If you ever want to figure out the best creative, audience, optimization, placement, or strategy to use, a good option is Facebook's built-in A/B Test feature. Here's how it works...

Facebook is rolling out a new ads creative optimization feature called Dynamic Experiences. Here's how it works and what you need to know...

Facebook/Meta is really bad at naming stuff. There are several ad creative optimization features that have similar names or function in close to the same way. It's no wonder they're easily confused. I try to clear it up in this episode.

Web events are critical to conversion reporting, optimization, and website retargeting. Here's an introduction to how it works and what you need to know.

For more info, go to https://jonloomer.com/events-intro

Facebook lead ads have been around for a LONG time. While I don't use them exclusively for lead collection, they should be a part of every advertiser's toolbox. Here's a closer look at their advantages and disadvantages.

Multiple Text Options is a great feature to use when you aren't sure of the best text to use in the primary text, headline, and link description fields. But, there are some things to consider first.

Call extension ads are different from your typical call ads, which start a phone call as soon as you click them in the news feed. Instead, a call extension ad looks like a link ad. When clicked, it loads a page of your website. But, there's a persistent "Call" button at the bottom of the page from a mobile device. Here's how to create them...

Facebook added an option when using Dynamic Creative called Optimize Creative For Each Person. This is actually a pretty big enhancement that allows Facebook to make major edits to your ads if it's believed that a user will respond favorably to them. Check it out...

Dynamic Creative is a nice option that helps you find the best combination of assets to get you, in theory, the best possible results. But, how do you view the best performing combinations?

A consistent, motivated approach to content creation needs a spark, however small. Don't worry about perfection. Start somewhere. Create. Here's how that happened for me...

Instead of creating multiple ads or running a split test, you may instead want to turn on Dynamic Creative. Here's how it works and some things to consider...

Audience fragmentation can become an issue when running multiple ad sets with different audiences that promote ads with similar creative and setup. The result can be less efficiency with your ad spend. Luckily, you can manage this with Automated Rules.

If you advertise for clients, you surely need to get approval on ad creative before ads can go live. There are two primary ways to do this.

Back in 2021, the Attribution Setting was born. This new unified setting took the place of the Conversion Window and Attribution Window from the pre-iOS world. This works differently than it did before, and it's important to understand how this impacts your advertising.

We know that website custom audiences will shrink due to iOS opt-outs. What we don't know, because Facebook never makes it clear, is to what extent this is the case. Not to mention, they never address specific scenarios that could create loopholes or confusion related to these opt-outs.

Most advertisers understand the importance of domain verification since the rollout of iOS 14+ changes in 2021. But there is actually another reason to claim ownership of your website beyond the benefits of configuring your web events.

Oh, this was fun. In this episode of The Pubcast, I take a trip down memory lane and remember some of the things that you may have forgotten about Facebook, Facebook marketing, and Facebook ads from as long as a decade ago. Remember That??

If you've spent any time in Events Manager, you've surely received notifications from Facebook related to unrecognized domains sending events from your pixel. You can control this using a setting called Traffic Permissions.

If you've run any video ads at all, you're undoubtedly familiar with auto-play. This can be good and bad, but it ultimately complicates reporting. You're going to get a whole lot of video plays, but you lose some context on the quality of those views. You can get this back with Breakdowns by Action, which allow you to separate actions with sound on and off as well as from auto-play or clicked-to-play.

Advanced Matching is a little thing that can provide incremental improvements to your conversion attribution, optimization, and targeting. Here's what you need to know...

Automatic Events can help you set up those pesky standard events automatically (hence the name) without code. Here's how to turn them on...

Facebook has started rolling out custom formatting for ad reports, and it could be super helpful. Here's how to find out whether you have it, how it might be used, and my one big issue with it.

The ad auction is what determines who sees an ad. How do you win an auction? Your ad needs to have the highest total score, which is based on three different factors. Let's discuss...

On November 10, I published a podcast episode. I had no idea what I was starting. I'd end up going on a streak of publishing a new episode every day for 100 days (and counting).

It's kinda crazy. In this episode, I crack a bottle of red and talk about how I organized myself to do this, the different methods of tracking, how it's impacted my content development strategy, and where it's going next.

Some advertisers have seen the Advantage Plus campaign creation method when setting up a conversions campaign in Ads Manager. It's actually been rolling out very slowly for the past several months. Is this a big deal? Does it offer significant benefits? Let's break down what we know...

The big spenders can make the most impact, but that doesn't mean that you can't drive results on a budget. But, with those restrictions, you can't follow the same rules. You should have three priorities for how you spend that budget...

The Pixel Event Setup Tool is a great concept. Add standard events to your website without the need for code. Unfortunately, it remains as flawed and limited today as the day it was released a few years ago. That doesn't make it completely worthless, though. Here are a few cases you should use it.

One of the primary ways that you can create a website custom audience is based on specific page or website. There are actually several different ways I use this within my advertising strategy.

Custom Conversions have a very specific purpose for Facebook ads reporting and optimization. Here, I provide an explanation of the three primary ways that I use them.

The Facebook Pixel Helper is an extension for the Chrome browser. It's a great, and free, tool for advertisers. Here, I lay out ways that you might use it.

View-through conversions have always been a thing. But changes during the past year have made them problematic. Let me explain what I was doing, what I found, my theory, and what I think Facebook should do related to view-through attribution.

Do you understand how custom conversions are different from standard and custom events and how you might use them? Let's clear up any confusion...

Have you ever run into a situation where Facebook isn't providing metric totals for conversions even though the rows above have data? This isn't a bug, there's a reason for it. Here's the explanation...

Businesses who haven't been able to verify their domains because their pixel was on a third-party website may have a solution due to Partner Level Configurations. This is a big deal!

If you use standard or custom events, you should also be sending parameters that provide more details about an action. Parameters are what provide granularity and power in reporting and targeting. Here's how they work...

Conversion numbers in Ads Manager rarely match up with other sources. One of the many reasons for this is view-through conversions. Here, I talk about what they are, when they might happen, and why they've been controversial.

You can now create custom audiences based on engagement with your product catalog. There are a couple of primary benefits to this over a typical website custom audience that should be useful for ecomm businesses.

Three months ago (on November 6, to be exact), I started an experiment. I wanted to see if I could reach all of my Facebook followers with a single ad. In this episode, I walk through what happened -- including some seriously weird and unexpected things -- and what I learned from it.

If you're only looking at surface-level metrics to measure the success of your ads, you aren't doing your job. You need to dig deeper. Ask these basic questions to help define what success looks like and what your ultimate customer looks like so that you can reach them.

If you're using both browser events from your pixel and server events from the API, you are probably sending the same events for each. This way, the API may pick up some events that the browser pixel does not. Of course, it's then important that Facebook runs a deduplication process to eliminate duplicates and prevent double-counting. Here, I walk through how to view your deduplication rate...

While cold, broad targeting is becoming increasingly popular, I still find warm targeting to be incredibly effective and important. This is especially the case for content creators like me, who attract website visitors to engage with free content. I then need to separate those levels of engagement to re-engage them or present a relevant product or opt-in. Here's exactly what I do...

Do you use custom web events to track, optimize for, and target actions that fall outside of standard events? I do! Here, I walk through the various events that fire on my website to help represent quality traffic, video engagement, and podcast engagement. I even explain how you can test my events!

Maybe you use your own formulas to determine the performance of your Facebook ads. You can actually use these formulas to create custom metrics that can be added as columns to your reports. Here's how!

Back in November, Facebook announced that they'd be removing some Detailed Targeting options. Now that those options were removed in January, we now know they weren't messing around. They removed a TON of targeting options, including ones that came as a surprise. So, now what should you do?

I've been experimenting with a new Facebook ads strategy that I'm really excited about. It remains unfinished as there are still things I'm trying to polish and fix. But, there's a specific need I'm trying to fill, and I can visualize exactly how it would work. Talk through this with me...

Facebook ads optimization is seriously lacking for content creators -- specifically for bloggers. Optimizing for Link Clicks or Landing Page Views doesn't cut it because Facebook doesn't care about the quality of those actions. Content creators do! Here's what Facebook should do...

Facebook is requiring advertisers to indicate that they have read and accepted terms related to non-discrimination, not only in regards to their advertising but on behalf of system users. If you don't, you won't be able to create ads.

Have you ever had results for a traffic campaign that seemed too good to be true? This is certainly possible, due to how optimization works. Here are some steps to take so that you can verify the quality of those clicks.

You may already manage Auction Overlap manually, but you can actually allow Facebook to manage this using Automated Rules. There are three ways that you can do this.

If you've been around me long enough, you've heard me talk about evergreen campaigns. These are campaigns that never go stale. They aren't magical, but it's all due to how they're set up that allows them to work this way.

Automated Rules are a great tool to automate and simplify the ads management process that is otherwise manual. Let's walk through how these are set up and some things to consider.

This isn't your typical advertiser brag about too-good-to-be-true results. It may be the opposite. Consider it a cautionary tale about how you should look beyond surface-level results. About how you should establish expectations based on data and know what to look for. This is a fun one. Enjoy!

Advertisers have been conditioned to believe that they shouldn't use text in ad images. The truth is that this rule was removed in September of 2020. No 20-percent rule. No scale. No throttling on images with more text. Use text if you want!

If you run Instant Experience ads, make sure that you don't use the default metrics or saved reports. There are metrics specific to Instant Experience that are available if you customize columns. But a question: Why can't you create targeting audiences based on most of these?

One of the classic ways to target people who have been exposed to you before is with Facebook Page Engagement Custom Audiences. Here, we talk about what they are, issues with them, and ways you might use them.

A useful targeting tool that anyone can use as long as you have the pixel set up on your website is the Time on Website Custom Audience. Here, I discuss what these are, how they work, and things you should think about before you use them.

You may know that I'm a big fan of Reach optimization. It's not magical, but it's a great tool for specific situations. Here, I explain how Reach optimization works, how you might use it, and examples of how I use it.