You may understand what creative diversification is, but you also need to understand why it’s important. While we should prioritize it because Meta says it will help us get better results, you should understand why that would be the case in this new environment.
Optimize at Scale
Let’s consider an extreme example where you do not provide a diverse set of creative. You create one ad that leverages a static image and a single primary text, headline, and description.
You have given Meta very few assets to work with. You’re betting your entire budget on that text and copy. If you’re getting bad results, Meta’s delivery systems have very few options available to help improve them.
But if you give Meta diverse creative, the ad delivery system has plenty to work with. Meta can choose from different formats depending on what is most likely to generate results based on the person or placement. Meta can show completely different versions depending on who is seeing your ad and where they’re seeing it.
Additionally, the delivery algorithm can adjust as things change. More of your budget may have been spent on a specific image for the first few weeks, but that can shift to a different image later on.
By focusing on creative diversification, you are giving Meta options. This allows Meta to optimize at scale.
Prevent Creative Fatigue
If you only submit a single image, one person might see that image over and over again. It eventually becomes noise and they’ll ignore it, resulting in wasted ad spend. This is creative fatigue. Fatigue doesn’t mean your creative is bad; it means your audience has seen it too often.
But if you give Meta several distinctly unique options to work with, fatigue is much less likely to become an issue. One person may see several very different ad versions.
Reach Diverse Groups of People
This is the part that most long-time advertisers struggle with.
In the past, the focus was on targeting inputs to control who might see your ads. We’d focus on demographics, custom audiences, lookalike audiences, and detailed targeting. But now, many of these levers are only used as audience suggestions. And even if you can restrict your audience, it’s rarely the right thing to do.
And the response is almost always a version of this: Well, how would I make sure the right audience sees my ad?
You do this with your ads. Create images, videos, text, and offers that appeal to your target demographic. Be very specific about the problems and pain points your ideal customer deals with. And show them how your product solves those problems.
But don’t focus on a single demographic. Most products have a range of customer personas that they can appeal to who have slightly different pain points.
Generic ads focused only on features won’t help you reach your ideal customer. Speak to these people about the things they care about most and using the language that they understand. Creative diversification effectively replaces what audience targeting used to do.
Read This
Here are some resources to dig deeper on this topic before moving to the next lesson:
- Creative Fatigue: What It Is and How to Prevent It
- Features Don’t Sell, But Pain Does
- Creative Diversification Is the New Targeting
Your other mini-courses
There’s no required order. Pick whichever one is most relevant to you.
What changed with Meta targeting, what still matters, and what you should stop obsessing over.
How to define your segments, break down your results, and see how Meta distributes your budget.
