Instagram first launched Stories Ads in March 2017. The ad unit was a quick hit, with advertisers seeing a significant uplift in ad recall right out of the gate. Last year, ad tech platform Kenshoo reported that Stories Ads accounted for nearly 20% of ad spend on the platform during the second quarter of 2019, with the share of spend on Stories Ads doubling year-over-year.
Consumer buying habits have significantly shifted this year since the start of the outbreak. Ecommerce has surged during the last six months, with online purchasing trends set to continue through the end of the year and beyond – greatly impacting the 2020 holiday season. Last month, eMarketer reported it expects there to be a 10.5% decline in total U.S. retails sales this year because of social distancing measures, but that ecommerce will likely grow by as much as 18% by the end of 2020.
Facebook’s Click-to-Call ads, that allow advertisers to include a “Call Now” button in ads displayed on mobile devices, have long been available via the ad platform’s Reach objective campaigns. But recently, we noticed a way to run Click-to-Call ads via Website Traffic objective campaigns. This is a valuable update for advertisers as it opens the door for more direct engagement with consumers across the site.
The pandemic has severely impacted small businesses across the globe, with shelter in place policies putting many at risk of permanently closing if they haven’t already. According to Facebook’s most recent Global State of Small Business Report, more than 25% of the 30,000 SMBs surveyed said they had closed between January and May of this year. Nearly two-thirds of those still in operation reported sales were down “significantly so” compared to last year.
Like every other facet of our daily lives, the 2020 back-to-school shopping season is going to see a major impact from the pandemic. Parents are experiencing extraordinary levels of uncertainty when it comes to the upcoming school year – with questions around everything from when schools will officially start to how students will be taught.
The California Consumer Protection Act (CCPA) went into effect on the first day of 2020. Now, six months later, enforcement of CCPA has begun – meaning, businesses that fail to comply with the CCPA’s regulations can be litigated by the California Attorney General. Because the law regulates how businesses collect and use consumer data, it directly impacts Facebook advertisers targeting California users.
Recently, Facebook began rolling out their new Leads Center to accounts for testing. Facebook’s Leads Center is a new built-in lead management tool that can help businesses organize and manage their customer contact information, similar to what other standalone CRMs offer. While like most new Facebook product releases it is not yet available to all accounts, read on to learn more about Leads Center and if it will be helpful for your business as it further rolls out to accounts in the coming weeks.
Have you noticed a sharp decline in spend for your Facebook remarketing campaigns targeting California users? If so, you’re not alone. Last week, Facebook ad strategists August Nobel and Abdul Nusrat both experienced significant drops in their retargeting spend share for California. Nobel reported he was seeing as much as 25% of retargeting budgets going to California last year — in February, less than 1% was being spent in California.
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At the start of any Facebook ad campaign, it’s tempting to make tweaks to your budget, change up your bid strategy or reconsider your targeting if you’re not seeing the results you want right away. Worse, if your ad performance appears to have noticeable fluctuations within the first few days, making edits to your ad settings seems like the responsible thing to do. Facebook makes it so easy, and maybe with just a slight tweak here or there you can level out your results or up conversions, right?
Are you looking to take your business to the next level using video ads? Go beyond the usual channels.
We are thrilled to announce that we are partnering with Lemonlight, a Los Angeles based video production company that specializes in creating affordable, high-quality video for businesses like yours. While Facebook Ads, Instagram Ads, and YouTube are effective and typically, most of media spend is allocated to them, we are going to focus on channels that have endless opportunities for success and are still heavily underutilized, such as LinkedIn, Pinterest, Reddit, and others. When it comes to video advertising, these could be your next big social media money-makers.