New day at Meta for conversion optimization

Today’s Social Media advertising rates are demure, mindful:

↗️ YOUTUBE: $1.86 CPM | ↗️ META: $7.56 CPM | ↘️ TIKTOK: $4.06 CPM

In this week’s edition: 

• 🌍 Is this Instagram’s Snap Map clone? 

• TikTok launches group chats 🤳

• 🎮 Video stories are coming to Twitch

But first…

☀️ For conversion optimization, a new day is coming at Meta

Meta’s latest announcement isn’t a product or feature — instead, it’s a roadmap, a new direction, and a breath of fresh air for marketers who’ve been pushing the platform to take conversion metrics seriously. If they follow through, it’s a big deal. 

What’s new: A slew of new test products designed to help advertisers customize their campaigns by more explicitly telling Meta what they value—whether that’s maximizing total conversions, or increasing conversion value, or driving incrementality.

What’s changing: While Meta is just beginning to lay the groundwork for these changes, there’s a lot coming between now and the end of the year. Immediately, Meta expects some advertisers to see improvements in Meta-attributed conversions—although they’re also expecting CPMs to rise.

Here are the headlines: 

• Conversion Value Rules — previously accessible only via API — will now be available in Ads Manager. These let us prioritize certain audience segments that we value more, by letting us bid more for higher value customers within the same campaign.

• New incrementality models are coming. By the end of 2024, Meta will add a new opt-in attribution setting that optimizes for—and reports on—incremental conversions, which are conversions that Meta believes would not have occurred without the ad impression. That’s in contrast to optimizing for volume, which focuses on driving as many total attributed conversions as possible. 

• Integrated analytics: To help with cross-publisher performance measurement, Meta is now enabling— and encouraging—advertisers to connect their analytics tools directly to Ads Manager through a simple API setup. First up: Meta is rolling out integrations with Google Analytics and Northbeam, and “hope” to expand to Triple Whale and Adobe “soon.”

• New optimizations: Meta plans to support optimizing campaigns for new definitions of value that come closer to reflecting actual business results, such as profit or predicted lifetime value.

The Inside Scoop🍦: Now trending in performance media

📷 Instagram has started testing a new “Friend Map” feature that’s very—very—similar to Snap Map. It allows Instagram users to post text and video updates to a map based on where they were taken. The map is shared with friends, whose updates can all appear alongside each other. Users have to choose a specific group of people to share their location with, such as Close Friends or only followers they follow back. Currently, Friend Map is available only as a limited test in a few markets—if you see it, let us know! 

Here’s what that looks like:

🕰️ Meanwhile, TikTok is taking on popular messaging services like Meta’s WhatsApp and Apple’s Messages. The platform announced on Monday that it is adding group chats by allowing users to create group chats with up to 32 people to chat and share content together. Let’s all watch Kesha brush her teeth right now!

🎮 And just to bring it full circle, Twitch is basically trying to be Instagram, as it continues its transformation from streamer to social app. After launching photo and text stories last year, the platform has now added video stories, with access rolling out to all eligible streamers (Partners and Affiliates with at least one stream of 45+ minutes in the last 30 days) by the end of this week. Streamers can upload or take video up to 60 seconds to their story.

We agree with TechCrunch: “Twitch hopes that its streamers will no longer have to use other social media platforms, like Instagram, to interact with viewers and keep them updated on their streams and day-to-day lives. However, it’s not likely that top creators would put all their eggs in one basket.”

🛍️ Amazon has struck new in-app shopping deals that will allow people to buy products from Amazon without having to leave TikTok or Pinterest. Typically, clicking on an ad would take a buyer to Amazon's interface, but this deal will let them check out from within TikTok or Pinterest using the payment method and shipping address saved on their Amazon account, assuming they’ve connected it to their social accounts. This comes on the heels of Amazon’s previous deals with Meta and Snapchat.

🔎 Google is under fire again, just weeks after the Justice Department won a major antitrust case against the company. As first reported by the Financial Times, Meta and Google allegedly teamed up to run a secret campaign that targeted 13-to-17-year-olds with Instagram ads on YouTube, breaking Google’s own rules against advertising to children.

• Spark Foundry, a US-based subsidiary of Publicis, allegedly worked with Meta and Google on Meta’s behalf to launch these illicit marketing campaigns in Canada and the U.S. earlier this year, after being tasked by Meta to reach more teen users.

• According to the report, YouTube recommended targeting users labeled as “unknown” in an attempt to disguise the group skewed toward teenagers. However, Google could use app downloads and online activity to determine “with a high degree of confidence” that the “unknown” group was populated by younger users.

📊 Metrics that matter: Instagram and Threads

For months, Instagram has been planting the seed with Creators to pivot away from “Followers” as the most important KPI on the platform. Now, it’s forcing their hand. As Meta continues to shift its focus on improving the For You Page user experience—that is, showing users content they are likely to engage with, instead of content solely from who they follow—Instagram is consolidating performance metrics within the app. Across all formats, “Views” will be the primary performance metric for organic and boosted content. Views will measure the number of times a Reel starts to play and the number of times a non-reel appears on a user’s screen. Accounts reached, accounts engaged, and interactions will still be available in Insights.

As more brands have swapped Threads for X in their social media strategies, there has been growing pressure for the platform to deliver on performance metrics. This week, Threads delivered. Sort of. Threads began its roll out of an analytics dashboard—for now available only on Desktop. Similar to the shift away from follower-driven performance metrics on Instagram, Threads is sharing a “by followers” and “by non-followers” breakdown of Views and Interactions metrics.

🐘The Elephant In the Room: Our weekly office poll!

🎥 YouTube announced this week that it is looking to capitalize on the popularity of Shorts by promoting longer video clips within its Shorts feed—though it’s not entirely clear how horizontally formatted long-form clips will fit into the vertically aligned Shorts feed.

Which begs the question:

📊 Last week’s poll results: 

What’s your favorite Snoop Dogg Olympics moment?

🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️ Snoop dances with the dressage horse 

🟨🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️ Snoop celebrates with the US gymnastics team 

⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Snoop carries the giant spliff-shaped Olympics torch

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 Snoop commentates a sick badminton rally

Thanks for reading! We’ll be back next week to fill your inbox with more tips, tricks, and treats from the addressable universe.

In the meantime, stay up to date with the latest performance marketing intelligence by following us on Linkedin, Instagram, and X.