Facebook and Google have become two of the most powerful digital advertising giants, but what are they not telling us about our ads? Many users are left in the dark when it comes to understanding how these two companies use their data, and the truth is that Facebook and Google are hiding some important facts about the ads we see.
In this blog post, we’ll uncover the secret of Facebook and Google and reveal what they’re really hiding about your ads.
Marketing at a Glance
Oftentimes, marketers are forgetting the most important part of their business: they’re missing out on reaching customers in as many ways as possible.
Originally, marketing was about one-to-one communication. With the advent of e-marketing and digital marketing, it’s transformed into more of an omnichannel approach in which you drive traffic and sales through multiple channels, not just one.
And with that movement came the rule of seven: when someone hears or sees or interacts with your brand seven times, they’re more likely to convert a customer or evangelize your brand, love it and tell people about it.
Advertisers have a host of options for where to run their advertisements. They can use Facebook, Google, Instagram, and Twitter all at once or they can run a test that leverages multiple channels.
There is a perception that Google and Facebook are the dominant players in digital marketing, but there’s an issue. When do you start leveraging multiple channels which one is responsible for the conversions? Is it Google? Is it Facebook? Is it Instagram, Twitter, or email? How do you know which channel is producing the most ROI?
Only you, as the marketer know what’s actually influencing your conversions. Certain ad formats perform better than others, depending on their type and content. And if you’re not sure, ask your customers! Our platform will help you understand which channels are responsible for boosting your ROI.
Here’s what Google and Facebook Aren’t Telling You About Your Ads…
Advertisers who are using these platforms for the first time will be surprised to find out that all ads aren’t created equally. For example, right now when someone comes to your website from an organic LinkedIn post, then they subscribe to your newsletter. You then send them a few emails, click on some of them, and come back to your website.
At this point, they still haven’t bought from you. And then they search on Google. They’re looking at your ads and checking out your website, but they don’t convert.
They’ll click on your bios in a google search, read about you, maybe go to the app store or to another website for more information about what you do, then bounce back to Facebook or Google.
You see them coming back to your website because they saw something on Twitter that clicked and now they come back to your website and complete their purchase. You can see this in the bounce rate of your website, or the time it takes them to reach your conversion funnels and actually complete their purchase.
Facebook, Google, and pretty much all paid platforms show the same thing: if someone clicks on one of these paid ads and they don’t convert right away, but then they come back through some other channel, even if they found your website before you did that paid advertising, they’ll tell you that they were responsible for that conversion.
Conversion rates are a tricky thing and don’t often match what Google and Facebook report on your analytics. While it’s true that these platforms show slightly different conversion rates, there are also a number of other factors that can affect these numbers.
Being able to track the direct revenue lift from your ads is helpful, but it’s not always clear which channels are causing that lift. Here are the common attribution models that you can use for analytics:
- Last Click. This is historically the default that just gives all the credit to the last click before someone converted. This can lead you to slow down your ads and increase costs by lowering your ad spending.
- Time Decay. The time decay ranking formula calculates a candidate’s credit based on the time between interactions. It’s simple math: how long is it from when someone clicks on your ad and when they click into the offer you’re trying to drive them to? For example, if your ads are performing well, but your negatives are growing, you risk getting stuck at a lower position and wasting money.
- Linear. Linear ad formats, also known as step-by-step ads, are affected by both cost and performance. This can lead to a desecration of the value of your ad, making it less valuable to Facebook or Google. It gives equal credit across each step of the conversion path—as a result, you can only optimize for your top goal pages and KPIs.
- Position-based. This is the most effective method of running ad campaigns for your business. It is typically used for positioning against specific customer journeys and is based on steps in the conversion path that cause a person to take action.
- First Click All. Using First Click All, Facebook and Google take the credit for all interactions on your website. This can be used to drive awareness to your brand, or as a proxy to determine the quality of the ad you’re targeting because people who click through may be more interested in what they’re reading.
- Data-driven. The data-driven model shifts based on the path that the user takes while they are on your site. For example, if a user clicks on a link that directs them to a site other than your own, even though that same link took them to your site, the model will still be data-driven and calculate a credit toward your audience attribution.
Facebook and Google aren’t telling you about these attributes, but these will greatly help you how to make better-informed decisions from your analytics so you can grow your marketing faster and get a better ROI.
