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The Breakdown Effect explained. Facebook Ads 2019 Benchmarks
Facebook explains why you should wait before judging the performance of your campaigns. 2019 FB Ads benchmarks: Are you performing better or worse?
The Breakdown Effect
If you’ve heard of the FB Breakdown Effect, great! You know what we’re talking about here! However, if you’re like Henry Wang and you’re wondering what it is, well, just keep reading.
A common point of confusion is that Facebook’s system appears to shift impressions into underperforming ad sets, placements or ads.
But, in reality, the system is designed to give you the best results at the campaign level, based on the ad set optimization you choose.
Here’s the example that Facebook came up with to explain this effect:
Let’s say that you launch a conversion campaign. You have one creative asset and you pick two placements: Facebook Stories and Instagram Stories. The budget is $500 for the whole campaign with a single ad set.
In the beginning, the CPA on FB Stories is $0.35. While on IG Stories, it’s $0.72. However, as the campaign goes on, IG Stories receives more budget.
Have you experienced something similar?
At the end of the campaign, FB Stories spent $50, while IG Stories $450. Why?
“At the start of the campaign, the system began delivering ads to both platforms to explore where the lowest costs were. […] The system recognized that although Facebook Stories was driving the most efficient results initially, it predicted the cost was going to increase throughout the duration of the campaign.
Based on the anticipated rising costs, the system was able to pivot and shift the budget to Instagram Stories in order to drive a more efficient average CPA for the duration of the campaign.”
This is the reason we sometimes find that the reporting data doesn’t match up with our expectations.
FB knows how the costs will change during the campaign, and it shifts the budget accordingly.
And that’s the Breakdown Effect.
The lesson to learn? Don’t play about with your campaigns too much. It’s sad to say, but the FB ad platform is smarter than us mere humans.
So, it can predict how the campaign will run more accurately, and work accordingly to deliver the best final results.
This Breakdown Effect causes a lot of confusion among advertisers while they’re interpreting their Ads Manager stats. It might have happened to you as well.
But now…YOU KNOW WHY!
So, remember that Facebook will always work in your favour and create flexible campaigns with the lowest CPAs.
That’s all. Hopefully we eliminated some of your fears and doubts. However, if you want to dive deeper into the Breakdown Effect and satisfy your nerd side, here’s the detailed explanation by Facebook.
Facebook Ads 2019 Benchmarks for industry
Struggling to judge the performance of your KPIs? You should probably have a look at this Facebook Ads benchmark released by WordStream.
The Benchmarks report has been shared by Rutger Thole, and it was created by analyzing the data of all WordStream clients.
You can find the averages across 18 industries for various KPIs such as Average Click-Through Rate (CTR), Average Cost per Click (CPC), Average Conversion Rate (CVR), and Average Cost per Action (CPA).
You can find all the data here.
However, keep this in mind: The objective of your campaigns, the price range of your product or service and the audience and positioning will all influence the KPIs.
For example, a campaign with a conversion objective will have a higher CPC than a campaign with a traffic objective. Therefore, you should review the benchmarks accordingly.
SECURITY
139M users’ data stolen
If you are a Canva user, here’s what you need to do right now: CHANGE YOUR PASSWORD!
The Australia based company had a huge data breach, with 139M users’ data being compromised by a hacker named GnosticPlayers.
Stolen data includes customer usernames, real names, email addresses, and city & country information.
For 61M of these users, password hashes were also present in the database.
For others, the stolen information included Google tokens, which users used to sign up for the site.
Since February this year, they have put the data of 932M users, stolen from 44 separate companies, up for sale on the dark web.
This latest hack takes GnosticPlayers up to a goal they have been aiming for: 1B user credentials stolen. More specifically, 1.171B credentials taken from 45 different companies.
SPONSORED
Pushground: A 100B monthly push source as an alternative to FB Ads, Natives and Google Ads.
Yeah, yeah, yeah… Push ads are the topic of the year! It started in 2018 and they’re still going strong in 2019. It’s at the point where people have figured out what works and they’re looking to scale and reach as many people as possible!
Enter Pushground! Founded in 2018 by ad-tech affiliates with over 7 years of experience, they’ve built one of the biggest push platforms with more than 10B requests per day and average CTR of 2%.
You can also do some cool targeting that you don’t always have available for push 😉 Check this out:
- You can filter by how long the users have been subscribed to receive push notifications (it can improve up to 6x times your performance).
- You can bid by source or supply_id.
- Target by Carrier, extremely useful when your advertiser has certain demands.
- Other targeting options like Country, Connection, City, Device.
- Day parting.
- True real-time data. It’s not just about clicks and deliveries but your winrate and also a breakdown for opportunities.
- 0% fraud with the integration of Opticks.io, an anti-fraud system that eliminates it before selling. Pushground eliminated 10% of its traffic with this to keep everything as high-quality as possible.
All the typical push traffic verticals do well here…
- Dating
- Sweepstakes/Lead Generation
- Casino
- Mobile Content
- E-commerce
OK, at this point you’re probably wondering about the CPCs, right? Well, have a look at CPC and volumes by country here.
We have got a special treat for WTAFF readers of course. You can get 10% on top of your first deposit from a minimum of $100 but there’s no maximum! All you have to do is reach out to support over live chat to get it!
Sign up with Pushground to get those push campaigns printing money!
FUNNELS
Lead Generation Funnel
If you are in the education niche, you might find this case study shared by Jason How very useful.
If this isn’t your niche, but you’re still all about the lead gen game, take a look anyway. You could find the inspiration you need to generate those hot leads.
Let’s dive straight into it.
Lead Magnet: Jason says that every education business is trying to get contacts’ info by providing a brochure. For many reasons, this is all wrong:
- 99% of students never read the brochures.
- Giving them a brochure doesn’t set a good expectation in the prospect. Even though you get their mobile and you call them, they’d still be pissed off.
- People leave fake numbers, because they can smell the sale from a mile away.
- Offering a brochure in exchange for their email and mobile isn’t a novelty any more. Every business is doing it and it’s a thing of the past.
The solution that Jason How suggests is quite simple:
Ad→ Program-specific landing page → Email sequence + Callback.
However, there are some rules you should keep in mind:
- Show only one program on the landing page. By showing them multiple programs on the landing page, you’re not helping them to make a decision. You’re telling them to look around for second options.
- Build a dedicated landing page for every course.
- Do not sleep on the follow up call. If a lead gives you his mobile, do not wait a month to call him back. Take advantage of the hot moment. Usually, the peak in desire and interest doesn’t last longer than 24 hours.
That’s all. With a bit of imagination, you’ll be able to see how this info can be applied to other niches as well.
Give it a try and let us know if it works!
Make those leads rain!
New features on Google Search
Google has made its intentions about serving Search users everything right within the Search page very clear.
They have been pushing out numerous updates which make it possible for users to get the information they want without ever leaving the Search page.
Continuing with this theme, Google has rolled out some new Search updates:
- Order Food on Google Search. Users will now be able to order food from local restaurants on its Search, Maps and Assistant.
Google has integrated service providers such as DoorDash, Postmates, Delivery.com, Slice, and ChowNow. More of these integrations will be added at a later date.
Previously, Google would just provide links to food delivery services when users searched for a restaurant or type of food. But now, they can simply tap the “Order Now” button, make their selections, and pay using Google Pay. All within the SERPs.
Or, if you prefer, you can order with Google Assistant by saying “Hey Google, order food from [restaurant].”
- Hotel Pricing Charts. Price graphs were tested last year and proved to be a popular feature. Unsurprisingly, they are now being officially rolled out to SERPs.
Searchers can use arrows to move forward and back in order to see historical pricing trends for particular hotel properties.
During GML, they announced a consolidated travel planning tool called Trips.
Earlier, in March, they introduced a new Hotel search and booking site which includes vacation rentals.
Late last year, a new look for the Hotel Local Pack was rolled out.
Travel is a huge vertical and Google has constantly been upgrading its travel properties and SERPs to capture an increasing share of consumers traffic and conversions.
Is automation enough?
Most of the people that use email as part of their mix treat emails with a “set it and forget it” approach.
That’s what automation is all about, but there are a few reasons why this approach is not the right way to go about it.
Joshua Chin lists the 3 main reasons for this:
- Tech glitches. For example, you may suddenly find that your links don’t work or your images aren’t showing up.
- Customer behavior and preferences change very often. You have to adjust accordingly, or you might find that your content isn’t relevant a few months down the line.
- You will miss out on a lot of chances without frequent tests and optimizations. Even minor tweaks can make a huge difference.
You can definitely automate a well-defined, results oriented process. However, to get to that stage you need to do a lot of testing and optimization work to make sure your communication stays relevant for your audience.
Here are a few ways to do that:
- Segment your audience under individual lists and deliver relevant content for each segment.
- Set email triggers based on customer behavior. For example, make sure that your customers receive any promotional emails only after they have received their orders.
- Deliver valuable content in between pre-purchase flows.
Joshua says that a simple A/B Test on the positioning of the graphics in 2 different versions of an email led to average order value drop from $232 to $53 per recipient.
Have a look at Joshua’s post here.
LinkedIn was hit by Google’s core update
It’s pretty rare to see large public companies admitting that they were hit by a Google algorithm update.
Uncommon, but not unheard of. During this year’s Search Marketing Expo (SMX), LinkedIn confirmed they were badly affected by Phantom, a core update which Google rolled out in 2017. Well, it’s not just about us marketers…
They did, however, go on to clarify how they recovered from it after a couple of months.
Eun-Ji Noh, a data scientist at LinkedIn, explained how they used machine learning to find and fix the issue. In case you were wondering, the issue was regarding low content quality and the fix was simply to improve such content.
It’s great to see bigger companies being open about these issues and addressing the elephant in the room. Hopefully, LinkedIn’s honesty will lead to more such companies sharing their experiences.
POOLSIDE CHAT
Cool tech, (funny) business, lifestyle and all the other things affiliates like to chat about while sipping cocktails by the pool.
Cryptopia needs $2M to stay alive
Cryptopia was once a flourishing company in the crypto-exchange market. Times have changed though, and now the Christchurch-based company owes $2M to the Arizona web services firm that hosts it.
But how did they fall from grace to end up in this hell?
We have to go back to January 15, when the company announced on Twitter that it had experienced a security breach. The result was a loss to the tune of $16M.
Basically, a group of hackers stole $16M worth of NZD.
After two months of restoring its security systems, the site re-opened in March. This allowed investors to login to their account and check their balances, on a read-only basis. But the balances displayed were based on the pre-hack period.
Later that month, the security system was fully functioning and the trading operations resumed.
But now, Cryptopia is back in the news. The company announced it is going into liquidation, trading operations have been blocked and all deposits frozen.
Unfortunately, the investors are now in a state of limbo: If Cryptopia doesn’t pay its debt to the web services firm, all the data and the tokens owned by investors will be lost.
Will they ever get their crypto back? It’s a mystery. Exactly like the price of Bitcoin. Will it keep growing to $20K or fall down again?
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