Today’s post is a bit on the experimental and hypothetical side. But it’s inspired by a very real problem that I see Meta advertisers make that can be fixed with a restructuring of the current campaign construction flow.
Redesigning the campaign flow is nothing new for Meta. It happens every few years, and it’s necessary. Meta is in a continual state of change, adding and tweaking features. This means that the feature set is different today than when things were last reorganized. That creates clutter.
And we have a whole lot of clutter. That clutter creates confusion.
The last time Meta redesigned campaign construction flow, it was with ODAX (Outcome-Driven Ad Experiences). The purpose was to simplify and consolidate campaign objectives, moving from 11 to six.
I don’t know that a drastic redesign is required of objectives. I will recommend trimming to five, but that’s not the biggest issue here.
The Problem with Performance Goals
The primary source of clutter comes from performance goals. It’s also what creates confusion.
The primary purpose of selecting a campaign objective is to declare what it is you are trying to accomplish. Which of these six things is your focus?
- Awareness
- Traffic
- Engagement
- Leads
- App Promotion
- Sales
Meta then streamlines the rest of the campaign creation process by removing certain options within the ad set. Your campaign objective helps determine which conversion locations and performance goals are available, for example.
It would be logical to assume that all of the performance goals are related to that objective, but it’s just not the case. When you select the Sales objective, you have several performance goal options which have nothing to do with fulfilling the task of sales.
“Number of Conversions” and “Value of Conversions” are the only performance goals that will help you drive more sales. The others (Landing Page Views, Link Clicks, Daily Unique Reach, and Impressions) are unlikely to lead you there.
That doesn’t mean there’s no reason to use those other performance goals. They’re simply not directly tied to Sales and shouldn’t be included within the Sales objective.
This is what creates so much confusion. Advertisers believe that there’s some sort of sales-related optimization power happening because they select the Sales objective, but that’s not necessarily the case.
If you select Impressions, your ad’s just going to get shown a bunch. That’s it. If sales happen, it’s incidental and not a focus of the delivery algorithm.
There are 21 performance goals in all and 71 different combinations of ways to get to them. That needs to be simplified.
Below is my proposal for how the new campaign objectives could be structured with the conversion locations and performance goals beneath them…
1. Awareness
This is the one objective that needs the least amount of tweaking, but it’s already the simplest.
There aren’t currently any conversion location selections. I’m sure you could technically add a layer here with conversion locations, but I don’t know that they really matter.
Proposed Performance Goals:
- Reach
- Impressions
- Ad Recall Lift
- NEW: Daily unique reach
All of these performance goals are related to Awareness in some way or another. I’m not sure why Daily Unique Reach wasn’t already an option, but I’m adding it.
Performance Goals Removed:
- ThruPlay Views (moved to Engagement)
- 2-Second Continuous Video Views (moved to Engagement)
These video view goals seem out of place for Awareness. It’s not that video videos don’t impact awareness. But, these should be part of engagement.
2. Engagement
This was already the fullest objective, prior to this process. Since I’m removing the Traffic objective (more on that later), any related performance goals were moved here.
Proposed Conversion Locations:
- Messaging apps
- On your ad
- Calls
- Website
- Facebook page
- Facebook group
- NEW: Instagram profile
It may seem like overkill, but all of these are needed for various engagement goals where the advertiser wants link clicks, landing page views, messaging conversations, video engagement, or post engagement.
The Instagram Profile conversion location was previously included under Traffic for ads driving to your Instagram profile, and that seems like a better fit here.
Conversion Locations Removed:
- App (moved to App Promotion)
There’s an objective for App Promotion which should cover any promotion of your app, as the name implies.
There are a whole lot of performance goals here, I’ll admit. But, unless you were to split off a new objective for Messaging or Calls, these all seem to make sense here.
Also keep in mind that these performance goals don’t all appear in one drop-down menu. It depends on which conversion location is selected.
Proposed Performance Goals:
- Click to Message
- Sponsored Message
- ThruPlay Views
- 2-second continuous video views
- Engagement with a post
- Event responses
- Reminders set
- Calls
- Website conversions (non-purchase and non-lead)
- Landing page views
- Link clicks
- Page likes
- NEW: Conversations
- NEW: Instagram profile visits
The Conversations performance goal is currently included within the Sales objective under the Messaging Apps conversion location. While you may want Sales from that engagement, it’s not the optimized action.
Performance Goals Removed:
- Daily unique reach (moved to Awareness)
- Impressions (moved to Awareness)
- App events (moved to App Promotion)
Daily unique reach and Impressions will appear repeatedly. I’m not sure why Meta insists on making them so readily available, regardless of objective.
3. Leads
This objective should be the most straightforward, but you’ll see that Meta currently clutters it up with completely unnecessary options.
Only keep performance goals that actually allow you to optimize for Leads.
Proposed Conversion Locations:
- Website
- Instant forms
- Messenger
- Instant forms and Messenger
Conversion Locations Removed:
- Calls (moved to Engagement)
- App (moved to App Promotion)
Sure, phone calls could technically be used to drive leads. But that’s incredibly difficult to measure and there’s no optimization for the lead itself from a phone call. Just use Engagement and the Call conversion location.
Once again, let’s move all app-related optimization to App Promotion.
Proposed Performance Goals:
- Website Conversions (Lead and Complete Registration only)
- Leads
- Conversion Leads
Super simple. You want leads? Set a performance goal related to leads.
There is no reason to include any of the following performance goals for the Leads objective. If you’re using any of these, do not expect to generate leads. Find a different objective.
Performance Goals Removed:
- Landing page views (moved to Engagement)
- Link clicks (moved to Engagement)
- Daily unique reach (moved to Awareness)
- Impressions (moved to Awareness)
- Calls (moved to Engagement)
- App events (moved to App Promotion)
4. App Promotion
The only conversion location for App Promotion is your app, so this is rather simple. You could technically add the Website and App conversion location here, but let’s keep that simple and leave it with the Sales objective.
Proposed Performance Goals:
- App events
- App installs
- Value of conversions
- NEW: Link clicks
I like how clean it is to keep one performance goal in a single objective, but I needed to make an exception with link clicks here because we’re talking about app promotion. You should still be able to optimize for link clicks, but that action is moved here.
Performance Goals Removed: NONE
The one potential problem will be Awareness-related performance goals to promote your app. I’m not sure how often advertisers do that now. If Meta can’t add App as a conversion location for the Awareness objective, we may need to add the awareness-related performance goals here.
5. Sales
This may be the objective that is used most often and which leads to the most misunderstandings. It’s too complicated now. Everything we do here should be related to driving sales.
Proposed Conversion Locations:
- Website
- Website and App
This got a little tricky. I want to continue to move anything app-related to App Promotion. Unfortunately, there’s a Website and App conversion location, so it needs to go somewhere. It could technically go either here or within App Promotion.
Conversion Locations Removed:
- App (moved to App Promotion)
- Messaging Apps (moved to Engagement)
- Calls (moved to Engagement)
You can generate sales with your app, too, but use App Promotion for that. Same goes for Messaging Apps and Calls, but there’s currently no way to optimize for the purchase when using those locations. If that changes, we can add them back.
Proposed Performance Goals:
- Conversions (value-based only)
- Value of conversions
It’s simple. Use the Sales objective to optimize for value-based conversion events. Otherwise, find a different objective.
That means, there’s a whole lot of stuff that will be moved out of this objective…
Performance Goals Removed:
- Landing page views (moved to Engagement)
- Link clicks (moved to Engagement)
- Daily unique reach
- Impressions (moved to Awareness)
- App events (moved to Awareness)
- Conversations (moved to Engagement)
- Calls (moved to Engagement)
REMOVED: Traffic Objective
This objective has no unique purpose. It’s primarily a way to send link clicks and landing page views to your website, app, messaging apps, and Instagram profile (as well as optimize for calls). All of this could be done within Engagement. Link clicks and landing page views are, after all, a form of basic engagement.
So, to make it official…
Proposed Conversion Locations: NONE
Conversion Locations Removed:
- Website (moved to Engagement)
- App (moved to App Promotion)
- Messaging apps (moved to Engagement)
- Instagram profile (moved to Engagement)
- Calls (moved to Engagement)
Proposed Performance Goals: NONE
Performance Goals Removed:
- Landing page views (moved to Engagement)
- Link clicks (moved to Engagement)
- Daily unique reach (moved to Awareness)
- Conversations (moved to Engagement)
- Impressions (moved to Awareness)
- Instagram profile visits (moved to Engagement)
- Calls (moved to Engagement)
Meta could make Traffic worthwhile if they ever create performance goals that are unique to website traffic — specifically quality traffic actions and behavior. Until that happens, it’s a mostly pointless objective.
Your Turn
This is my vision for what a new simplified version of the campaign objective flow could look like. It’s not perfect, and I’m sure there are holes. But anything you’d change or add?
Let me know in the comments below!
