Hey,

So I guess the first two things on the agenda are:

1. I’m alive.
2. I’m sorry for going missing.

I've been dealing with a bunch of pesky medical issues over the last several weeks which required traveling hither and tither to get poked and prodded and tested up the wazoo. But I’m fine, thankfully, and returned to work this week.

I got nearly no work done in that period because I spent so little time at my desk but I did keep one thing going at least: fiction writing. All that time spent sitting around in hospitals and waiting rooms was spent productively and I’ve been typing up the contents of various dog-eared notebooks all week. And it’s… good? So there’s that.

Pretty much everything else headed south though, but I do have something for you this week (below) on Facebook Ads and some of the changes going on right now.

Just note that I have about 2000 emails in my Inbox – even after clearing out the obvious junk – so if you are waiting for something from me, it’s going to take a while. If it is time sensitive, just hit Reply to this email and flag it to me and I’ll try to prioritize it. (Please note that doesn’t guarantee a response this weekend!)

Okay! Here is your one marketing wotsit.

Facebook Ads Changes

Facebook is perhaps 90% of my ad spend these days so I like to keep a close eye on changes, which happen regularly enough over there (pour one out for anyone trying to teach people this stuff!).

Jon Loomer, as always, is my go-to resource. He wrote a guide recently on one of several recent changes to Facebook Ads. If you use Conversion campaigns, or if you use Interest Targeting Expansion (or have ever been tempted), then this post is for you.

I personally don’t use Conversion campaigns – they don’t work well unless you are running ads to your own Pixel-powered site, and I prefer running Traffic campaigns direct to Amazon (et al). More importantly, I also strongly advise you to stay away from Interest Targeting Expansion (except in the most niche of circumstances and if you are an expert Facebook Ads user).

The new change specifically is this: if you use Conversion campaigns, you will be forced into using Interest Targeting Expansion. This is pretty typical of Facebook – it tends to start automating certain aspects of the platform, first making it optional, and then often making it compulsory, much to the chagrin of min-maxing noodlers like myself.

But what is Interest Targeting Expansion? And why am I so against using it? And why do you need to know about it, especially if you don’t use Conversion campaigns.

Okay, let’s whizz over those in turn.

The way it’s supposed to work is pretty cool, and is part of the general trend of Facebook to deploy it’s fancy-Dan machine learning algorithms to make your ads more effective on the fly, for example by doing things like noticing that men between the age of 55 and 65 on desktop devices are much more likely to click on your ad.

Interest Targeting Expansion does something similar when it comes to your… interest targeting. For example, if you are targeting people who like Buffy (and you have Interest Targeting Expansion switched on) then Facebook might show your ad to people who also like Angel. In other words, Facebook will look for people with similar interests and lump them into your audience, even though you haven’t specifically targeted them. This has the net effect of greatly increasing your audience, and the way Facebook works these days is that bigger audiences are often better as it gives a larger pool for the system to sieve through to find your best potential targets (there’s that machine learning stuff again).

With me so far?

“No!” says half the room, yet I press on regardless.

That’s the way Interest Targeting Expansion works in theory, and it works pretty well in practice too until you bump up against the finicky world of books. You see, authors advertising on Facebook often do what I do – run direct ads to Apple, Amazon, B&N etc. And even among the Amazon ads, we often split those up by territory and have separate campaigns going to Australia, USA, Canada, and so on. In fact we need to do this because you need different links to go to the right Amazon store, and of course an Amazon customer can’t purchase your ebook at Apple, and vice versa.

You can probably guess where I’m going with this.

Facebook’s system is smart, but it’s not that smart. So, if I am a Kindle Unlimited author running a 99¢ Countdown deal which is only running on Amazon USA and Amazon UK, I will only want to show my ad to Amazon customers in the USA and the UK. But if I have Interest Targeting Expansion turned on, Facebook’s system might see that Americans who are interested in all-things Kindle are very similar to Americans interested in all things Nook and show my ad to them – which will be a colossal waste of money, and just annoy people for good measure.

Same goes if you are a wide author advertising your free series starter on Apple. Facebook’s system – if you have Interest Targeting Expansion switched on – might start showing your Apple ad to Kobo or Amazon users, which is going to do nothing for you, other than torch your money.

So… avoid Interest Targeting Expansion, unless you really know what you are doing and have a very specific aim in mind.

Facebook is probably going to start pushing it a lot more – that’s how these things usually work – so it’s important to remember this if you advertise at all on Facebook.

But, I hear you ruminating, what if you are one of those cool cats who sends people to your website and has the Pixel installed and uses Conversion campaigns? Should you opt out of Interest Targeting Expansion? Well, you can't. Facebook will be forcing you into it, so you have to test and see if you want to still run those Conversion campaigns and hand over the targeting reins to Facebook. Otherwise you will have to switch to Traffic campaigns instead.

Of course, there is obviously less danger here if you are sending people to your site which has purchase links for all stores. But in my personal experience, I still think Facebook is to aggressive in adding in “adjacent” audiences when it comes to a niche industry like books – where tastes are very well defined - and it can lump in readers who won't like your stuff and tank your ads. But feel free to try it if you like!

Interest Targeting Expansion remains optional for Traffic campaigns and is switched off by default for those Traffic campaigns - although there is some on-screen messaging encouraging you to try it, as well as various prompts around your dashboard. For all the reasons mentioned above, I recommend ignoring those prompts.

As with everything Facebook, the roll out of these changes is being done in phases and not everyone will see them quite yet. But you can get a reasonably good idea of what Facebook might add in when plugging in your usual interests. See the ones that Facebook suggests adding? It’s often those.

Not always though…

Dave

P.S. Email-zapping music this week is a belter from The Honeycombs with Have I The Right?​