Meta Ads vs First Party Data - Next Advertising era
Let's explore how to leverage the potential of Meta's First Party advertising platforms: Facebook and Instagram.
Initially, Meta was the company most affected by Apple's revolution, which led to the current upheaval concerning 3rd party cookies and Mobile Advertising IDs. The early releases of Intelligent Tracking Prevention (ITP) and App Tracking Transparency (ATT) hit the quarterly earnings of Palo Alto hard, pushing the company to rethink the foundations of its advertising infrastructure, which clearly wasn't ready for the Next Advertising Era. Meta's engineers have undoubtedly done a tremendous job: the quarterly results and the stock market value speak for themselves
We might never know the exact changes made to the foundations of the advertising platform, but we can certainly make the most of the features that have been made available to us.
How to leverage first-party data in Meta Ads
The main social networking platform offers two key features:
Customer List: the ability to create audiences using the hashed emails of users who have consented to profiling and marketing.
Conversion API: the ability to send both online and offline conversion information to the Meta Ads platform using hashed emails.
Naturally, the Facebook team has focused on two main elements: a strong emphasis on performance measurement and good targeting options based on first-party data. These two solutions seem straightforward and can be activated in various ways, but it's more important to identify the business cases that make activating these features valuable.
How to Leverage Conversion APIs in the Commerce and Finance Sectors.
Meta's Conversion APIs are powerful tools that enable businesses to track and optimize their online advertising campaigns. Particularly for the e-commerce and banking sectors, these APIs can be extremely beneficial. Here are some examples of how they might be applied:
E-commerce
Improved Data Tracking Under Strict Privacy Conditions:
The Conversion APIs allow for more reliable tracking in contexts where browsers block third-party cookies or tracking tags. This is especially useful for ensuring data collection in environments with privacy restrictions like iOS.
Offline Conversion Data:
E-commerce businesses can integrate offline transaction data (like in-store purchases) with online data. This helps to understand the impact of digital campaigns on offline sales and vice versa.
Enhanced Data Quality:
Unlike the Pixel, which relies on browser-based data, the Conversion APIs can send data directly from servers. This reduces the risk of data loss due to page loading issues or ad blockers.
Finance
Tracking Complex Conversions:
For complex operations like opening an online bank account, which may involve multiple steps and verifications, the Conversion APIs can provide more accurate tracking of the entire process, even if the user interrupts and resumes later.
Sensitive Data Protection:
Banks can use the Conversion APIs to send conversion data securely and in compliance with privacy regulations. Unlike the Pixel, which might be more exposed to security risks, the APIs offer a more controlled and secure method of data transmission through a server-side implementation that allows for the verification of each piece of data sent. For example, we can send the customer's lifetime value, their risk assessment without fear that such data are exposed to competitors or malicious actors because the sending will take place in a protected and internal environment.
Advanced Personalization Based on Complex Data:
Using detailed and specific data from the banking sector, such as types of financial products searched or past interactions with banking services, the Conversion APIs can help create highly personalized campaigns.
In both cases, the use of Meta's Conversion APIs enables safer, more accurate, and privacy-compliant data management, offering significant advantages over the traditional Facebook Pixel. This approach is particularly advantageous in a context where user privacy and data security are increasingly central.
How to leverage Customer Lists in the Commerce and Financial sectors
Meta's Customer Lists are a powerful tool for advertising targeting, allowing businesses to directly reach their existing customers or similar customer segments. Here are some specific business cases for the e-commerce and financial/banking sectors:
E-commerce
Reactivating Previous Customers:
Using a Customer List of clients who haven't made a purchase in a certain period, an online store can create targeted campaigns to reactivate them, offering special discounts or showcasing new products that might interest them.
Upselling and Cross-Selling:
A Customer List of clients who purchased a specific product can be used to promote related or complementary products. For example, a customer who bought a phone might be interested in related accessories like cases or headphones.
Loyalty and VIP Programs:
Create a Customer List of loyal or high-value customers to offer them exclusive deals or early access to products, thus strengthening their loyalty and incentivizing continued purchases.
Finance/Banking
Promoting Specific Financial Products:
A bank can use a Customer List of clients who have shown interest in or have subscribed to specific financial products (like mortgages or personal loans) to promote related offers or services.
Targeting for Life Events:
Banks can create Customer Lists based on significant life events (such as buying a house or planning for retirement) to offer relevant financial products, like mortgages, retirement savings plans, or life insurance.
Financial Education and Consulting:
Using Customer Lists of clients who have interacted with educational content or financial planning tools, banks can offer webinars, personalized consultations, or informative resources to deepen their financial knowledge and promote advisory services.
In both cases, the use of Customer Lists allows for very precise and personalized advertising targeting, based on actual customer data. This approach can significantly improve the effectiveness of advertising campaigns, increasing conversions and strengthening the customer relationship.
Conclusions
In the past, we might have relied on third-party data to accomplish some of the business cases described, forgetting that interacting with our own customers or users similar to our customers is easier and can lead to higher conversion rates, offsetting the potentially more limited reach. It's always important to balance awareness/engagement strategies correctly. The disappearance of 3rd party cookies opens up new scenarios where strategic data use planning is necessary to identify every business opportunity.
There's talk of artificial intelligence in every field, but start first with human intelligence. If you have never used first-party data, you need to face a learning curve where the use of AI is the final step. Start by using different bidding strategies for customers and non-customers, for users who have started the conversion process and for those who have not.
Once you master these 'simple' strategies, you can apply more advanced models to the data, like identifying users who are about to convert, those of higher value, or those who may potentially become high-value users. Don't rush, but think about what you can first do on your own by analyzing the data: if you bring those strategies to success, finding the budget for more complex implementations will be easier, and managing those projects will be simplified because you will have gained experience in environments that are easier to control.