In Today's Issue

• Meta Platform Update: Spam, Targeting, & Creative

• The Help Line: Issues With Boosting Rental Ads

• That Poster on the Wall Isn’t There

• LinkedIn’s New Sponsored Articles

• Reddit IPO Coming in March. Probably. We Think.

Meta Platform Update: Spam, Targeting, & Creative

Every Friday, we check in with our Meta Ads correspondent Andrew Foxwell. Andrew has visibility into $300 million dollars in Meta ad spend through his Slack community called Foxwell Founders.¹

This week, we discuss the removal of detailed targeting and the shift towards using broad targeting and AI. We also touch on the importance of creative in targeting and the rise of creative strategists. The conversation then moves on to the issue of spam messages on Facebook and how to mitigate them. Finally, we discuss the current state of the Meta ad market and the challenges of getting conversions.

Takeaways

1. Facebook is removing detailed targeting, but interest targeting will still be available.

2. Creative is becoming a crucial aspect of targeting in meta ads.

3. Spam messages on Facebook can be filtered by turning off guest chat. Here’s how:
   In the Meta Business Suite, go to your Inbox, go to Settings, and then go to Chat Plugin, turn off Guest Chat, and hit Publish at the bottom right of the page.

4. The meta ad market post-January 1st is challenging, with lower conversions and stable CPMs.

Be sure to check out Andrew’s Foxwell Founders community of digital ad buyers and his extensive training in the digital ad space.¹

The Help Line: Issues With Boosting Rental Ads

In today’s instalment of the Digital Marketing Help Line, we received this question from Greg Tirico:

For some help on this, earlier today I spoke with Robert Brill from Brill Media:

So there you have it. This sounds to Robert like a bug in the boosting system.

A couple of troubleshooting ideas would be:

1. Try running the ads through Ads Manager, like a regular campaign

2. Try running them through a different Ads Manager account if you have access to one, or are willing to set one up for testing.

3. Appeal the denial to Meta and hope that you get an actual human being to read it and not just the digital cousin of the bot that denied it in the first place.

That Poster on the Wall Isn’t There

This is the Asian Boss Girl podcast:

Watch this video for a few moments, and you’ll see a small poster for a shampoo brand on the wall:

Then, about half way through the episode, it disappears:

Turns out, it’s not really there at all.

It was a virtual product placement, which came from a company called Rembrand. Their ad tech allows for post-production insertion of virtual products into videos.

Since June, Rembrand has been working with around 50 creators, placing ads in their content. The company has raised $9 million with investments from BOLD from L’Oreal.

Rembrand's system can insert products within a few hours, and they’re working on a self-serve platform that could get this down to minutes. The cost ranges from $10 to $30 per thousand impressions, more or less the same as traditional podcast ad rates.

[more]

LinkedIn’s New Sponsored Articles

LinkedIn is introducing Sponsored Articles, allowing company pages to promote their articles directly on the platform.

This includes an option to add a Call-To-Action (CTA) button, such as "Unlock Article", which requires users to sign up to continue reading.

They’re still rolling this out, so you might not have it quite yet.

Over time, LinkedIn says it plans to integrate additional post amplification and CTA options.

But of course, the effectiveness of this tool largely depends on the quality of the articles.

Currently, only articles authored by companies are eligible to use this.

Reddit IPO Coming in March. Probably. We Think.

Reddit’s on-again, off-again IPO seems to be back on again. If it actually happens, this would be the first major IPO in the social media space since Pinterest in 2019.

Reuters is reporting the company plans to publicly file in late February, launch a roadshow in early March, and finalize the IPO by month's end. Valued at about $10 billion in 2021, Reddit aims to sell around 10% of its shares, with the final IPO valuation set closer to the listing date.

¹ Some links in this newsletter may provide affiliate revenue to us.