Keeping ads on forever? 🤯

Hey there! 👋

Another crazy week of managing our clients and in-the-trenches work. I almost feel like I'm getting some actual good work done here. One tool that helped me focus massively recently is Spacegoods. It's an all-in-one adaptogenic mushroom hot chocolate drink that has a much better taste and more benefits than a regular cup of coffee. Go check them out!

I want to talk about making bets with your Facebook ads this week. As sometimes it seems like we are playing poker with all the creatives we test on a weekly basis. This game of poker doesn't have to be complicated though!

Let's get into it!

So I was watching this video from Taylor Holiday about never needing to turn off a Facebook ad. (you can watch the video below👇)

Basically realising doing ads is just about making bets. I have 10 creatives, I might test out 5 first as I think these will perform well.

Go back one step.

You think they will perform well.

That's where you go wrong, as you don't, I don't, the brand owner doesn't, the marketing manager doesn't, the creator doesn't, the video editor doesn't...

The only way of knowing is to feed the ads to the algorithm and see what will perform, where Facebook will spend is what usually works.

You are essentially placing a bet for future outcomes and saying to Facebook, this asset is likely to get me $$$ back.

Now a great way to do this is to say to Facebook: I am willing to pay I.e. $35 for someone to buy which is also what we historically have seen in terms of CPAs.

Now let's put up the ads with that constraint and set up a cost cap of $35.

If Facebook doesn't spend any money there then they estimate you will lose the bet as it's not confident enough to give that asset any spend. If it does give the asset spend, then they are confident that it may meet that $35 target.

Considering the above, there is a valid argument to be said that you can keep ads on forever as at that point in time the algorithm is not confident in the bet you have placed, but in the future, it might be.

We are still thinking about this methodology inside the agency to see how to best implement this into our systems, but the whole system makes sense.

The way we currently have most accounts structured is the following:

1. One big CBO for testing. In there we have one control adset with our best ads. Every time we want to test anything we make a new adset and test it against the control to see if it can outperform it.

2. Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns. We have these in some accounts (where they are available) to scale winners more. We basically move all winners into here and steadily increase the budgets

3. ABO. We tend to stay away from ABOs mostly, but in some cases it does make sense to have them. I.e. some clients do have use cases for retargeting specific campaigns. In those cases we want to hit all audiences and set up an ABO for retargeting.

I've actually recorded a YouTube video on the best account structure in 2023. Go watch it here 👇

I hope this helps you set up your Facebook campaigns for success! Reply to this email and tell me if you've implemented them successfully!

Most Valuable Piece of Content

Every week I want to share a piece of content I've found valuable and learned a lot from. This week it's this video from Taylor Holiday from Common Thread Collective about why you should never turn off an ad.

Taylor is one of the greatest minds in the space and the way he breaks this down is fantastic and could be valuable for any brand running any paid media at scale.

Go check it out below:

Top 5 Ads of The Week

I've found some absolute killers this week including ads from Dr Squatch, Copenhagen Grooming and Hims! It's a mix of statics and videos which I think you'll love!

I've been using Foreplay for months now, and I can honestly say it's one of the best value-for-money tools for any eCommerce brand, agency owner or anyone that runs paid media. It allows you to save ads from TikTok's and Facebook's ads library and keep them forever in your inspiration boards!

Go get yourself a free trial here!

That's a wrap!

I hope you've enjoyed this week's issue of DTC with Dennis!

See you next week at 7 PM CEST.

P.S. On Twitter? Follow me here for daily value bombs about eCommerce and DTC!

P.P.S. One of our clients just shared some mindblowing numbers after one month of taking over from another agency. Check them out below 🚀: