When it comes to Facebook ads, it’s nothing new that creating relevant Facebook ad creative has a big impact on your results. Most would believe that they need to segment all their ad creative for it to appear well but it’s not true. Automatic Placements have been generating for us much better results for our clients at K6.
The basic principle is that the more leeway you give Facebook, the better your results will be. This happens mostly because of the breakdown effect which we’ve covered extensively in one of our articles. This big change happened as part of the Facebook Power 5 which we love over here at K6.
With all the Facebook ads options, it would often take $5,000+ just to make a few initial split tests with your ads. Just think about the creative options, the audiences, the placements and so on. Automatic Placements allow you to focus on the ad creative and audience rather than the placement.
Why using Automatic Placements?
Automatic placements essentially mean that your ads will appear on all the placements it can appear on. For Facebook, it’s a way to give you the best results based on the auction. In other words, by having multiple placements, Facebook can give you the most affordable results by varying the placements on which you appear.
For instance, Facebook might see that not a lot of ads are advertising on the right-hand-side and give you that space where you’ll make a cheap sale. Facebook essentially uses advanced algorithms to find the best placements at the best time to give your brand the best results possible. This might seem complicated but it’s quite simple.
It’s somewhat similar to the concept of the breakdown effect where the more you spend, the harder it is for Facebook to give you the cheapest sales. When you weren’t spending much, they gave you the best of the best but when increasing your budget, they give you more expensive conversions.
The principle: by choosing automatic placements, you should get better results for your money.
If you’ve played around in the Facebook ads manager before, you probably analyzed the breakdown of your ads to see that some placements were performing better than the others. For instance, you saw that the Facebook mobile feed was crushing it.
Your first reflex is to only use this placement for your ads. You do this and then your cost start creeping up. Why? It’s because you were able to get cheap results on the Facebook mobile newsfeed because of the Automatic Placements. Essentially, since Facebook could alternate with other placements, it was only showing your ads on the Facebook mobile newsfeed when it was the cheapest.
If you aren’t still sure what Automatic Placements, I recommend taking a look at Facebook’s guide.
What actually happens when you turn on Automatic Placements?
The first thing to understand is that your Facebook ad creative might not appear in all of the placements. For example, certain placements require that you use a video. Don’t be confused if your ad doesn’t show up in all of the seven Facebook ads placement categories.
When you choose Automatic Placements, Facebook will go and start showing your ad in the placements most likely to convert. In other words, they are using an advanced algorithm to choose which placements will convert the best.
Here’s a list of the different Facebook ad categories:
- Feeds: Instagram, Facebook, Facebook Marketplace, Facebook video, Facebook right column, Instagram Explore & Messenger Inbox.
- Stories: Facebook, Instagram & Messenger.
- In-Stream: Facebook In-Stream video.
- Search: Facebook search results.
- Messages: Messenger Sponsored ads.
- In-Article: Facebook Instant Articles.
- Apps: Audience Network Native, Banner & Interstitial, and Audience Network Rewarded Video.
If you want to have more specific information about the different Facebook ad placements, I highly recommend this article from Facebook.
A few tips from K6
- Make sure you understand that nobody knows which placement is best. It doesn’t only matter on your industry or goal, it’s also a matter of timing.
- Keep making your own Facebook ads creative tests. You can take inspiration & ideas from others but it’s not a guarantee that it will work.
- Focus on your Facebook ad creative & audience rather than on the placements, budget and other technical issues (unless it affects your ads directly).
- Even if a placement yields higher than average cost per conversion, you should keep it. It’s most likely allowing the other placements to perform better.
- When scaling, try to duplicate your ad set with cost control to keep your CPA close to your goals.
- Make sure you edit your Facebook ad creative to see what it looks like on all placements.
How we’ve grown Mozart Supplies
We’ve been able to generate a 3.22X ROI and $60K in the company’s first 7 months using Facebook advertising. The challenge was to take a company that had never used Facebook advertising before in order to generate strong results.
Initially, we tested a lot of different audiences and Facebook ad creatives to find out what was working and what wasn’t. We also used our knowledge of Facebook Power 5 to optimize faster & scale more efficiently. We rapidly saw that Automatic Placements were yielding better results which allowed to get such great results.
If you want to see the actual case study, I recommend reading “How we got a 3.22X ROI and $60K in the company’s first 7 months using Facebook advertising”. Enjoy!