Facebook & Google Ads Blog

Marketing Terms & Digital Advertising Acronyms You Should Know

March 14, 2019 10 Comments Animalz

When it comes to digital advertising and marketing terms, acronyms like UGC, GDN, ROAS, RTB, SOV, and even TrV are commonly tossed around when discussing campaigns.

If you’re not familiar with them, you’re not alone.

Although shorthand ways of describing concepts are nothing new, the ever-expanding laundry list of industry abbreviated terms can confuse even the most seasoned and savvy of digital marketing professionals.

The world of Web marketing and paid ads is littered with technical jargon, catchphrases, and abbreviations. And anything that can be turned into a catchy acronym often is.

While some online marketing terms have become more widely known as marketing has gone mainstream, many acronyms remain unknown outside the industry — and some are even mystery to many people inside it.

Here’s our compilation of acronyms you should know and what they all mean:

The Complete Guide to CPC Advertising (on Google, Facebook, and Instagram)

March 11, 2019 2 Comments Animalz

Global digital advertising spending is expected to rise 17.1% to $327.28 billion this year, with Google and Facebook leading the pack when it comes to U.S. ad sales. Cost-per-click, or CPC advertising, factors heavily into those big numbers.

No matter where you choose to advertise — Google, Facebook, Instagram or beyond — how you manage your CPC efforts will greatly impact how much you shell out in ad costs in those channels.

If you’re not spending a lot of money on advertising and have opted not to run experiments with different audiences, ad sets and variations, and are instead focused on optimization, CPC advertising is likely a great option for your business.

Here’s everything you need to know about CPC advertising on Google, Facebook, and Instagram, including tips and tricks to lower your cost per click.

Facebook Video Thumbnail: Is it Essential for the Success of Your Ads? (a $1,000 Experiment)

March 6, 2019 3 Comments Paul Fairbrother

At AdEspresso our mantra is “test everything,” and as we heavily use Facebook video ads, we’re always looking for different ways to maximize their performance.

Recently we tested what Facebook video ad format works best and also how video performance varies by platform. But that was not enough to slake our unquenchable thirst for knowledge (and for “scientific” data that help you maximize your digital marketing and ROAS).

So we turned our attention to one little detail that many marketers neglect: the Facebook video thumbnail, that custom image or frame from your video advert that viewers see first.

As we’ve seen working with thousands of customers, more often than not marketers willy-nilly take one frame from the video and use it as their Facebook video ad thumbnail.

But that’s wrong!

Your Facebook Video thumbnail is especially important when users have autoplay turned off for Facebook videos, and picking the wrong image could seriously jeopardize the outcome of your Facebook video ad campaigns.

To prove it, we decided to invest $1,000 and run an experiment.

How to Use Facebook Lookalike Audiences to Scale Your eCommerce Business

March 5, 2019 21 Comments Paul Fairbrother

To scale any business it’s essential to bring new people into the sales funnel using prospecting ads.

These audiences of people that haven’t engaged with us before are called cold traffic, as opposed to our Facebook fans, leads, and customers which have already engaged with us and are referred to as warm traffic.

To select a cold audience to target, there are basically two methods.

The first is to use interests and demographics, as we covered recently in our guide: How To Find The Best Audiences To Target On Facebook.

The second option is to use Facebook Lookalike Audiences.

And as these last ones often give the best results and are very quick to set up, today we’re going to explain how to create and get the most out of them.

Why Google Ads Conversion Tracking Doesn’t Track All of Your Conversions

February 26, 2019 9 Comments Brad Smith

Google Ads conversion tracking is limited in multiple areas.

If you aren’t using outside, third-party sources to track conversions, you’ll be missing countless sales that happened.

Phone calls don’t track well on Google Ads.

Consultations are just that: consultations. They aren’t full sales.

Google Ads conversion metrics don’t tell the whole story because they simply can’t.

Unless you are only selling direct products online with zero other methods of contact or purchase, your data is not telling you the truth.

Here are a few common ways that Google Ads conversion tracking is messing up and how to plug the gaps.

How to Use the Facebook Attribution Tool to Analyze and Optimize Your Customer Journey

February 20, 2019 11 Comments Tory Wenger

Our customers live in a multi-channel world. To survive and thrive in this advertising realm, we must too.

Connecting how people move across devices through the consumer journey is essential to determining which ads are really driving conversions.

Each interaction contributes to the eventual conversion, but if those touchpoints aren’t tracked, we have no way of knowing which ads, platforms, and devices are working – and ultimately, which are making (or costing) us the most money.

In this article, I’ll show you:

What the Facebook Attribution tool is
How to set up the Attribution tool
How to select your Attribution model and window
Four unique ways to analyze and optimize your customer journey using this new feature

Let’s dive in!

Square Image vs. Landscape: What Works Best? (a $1,200 Experiment)

February 7, 2019 7 Comments Paul Fairbrother

The most important part of a Facebook ad is always the image or video. Users scroll through their newsfeed at speed, so you need engaging visuals to make them stop, then with any luck, they’ll read the headline and ad text.

Without an eye-catching image, it doesn’t matter how good your ad copy is, the chances are they won’t even register it as they scroll past.

And if that was not enough, until a few months ago, Facebook advertisers could only use landscape images for their ads, and this ~~has been a real pain in the~~… 😤 has caused confusion and stress.

Then everything changed. Now Facebook allows us to use square images for Ads both on its platform and on Instagram.

But confusion and stress are still there, and now the question is:

Square Image vs. Landscape – What Works Best for Your Facebook and Instagram Ads?

We didn’t have a bulletproof answer and, as usual, we decided to run an experiment and invested $1,200 (of our own advertising budget, so you don’t have to use yours) to find the “scientific” answer!

Curious to know which is the winning format? Keep on reading!

How To Find The Best Audiences To Target On Facebook

February 5, 2019 4 Comments Paul Fairbrother

Do you know where your customers live? Are they male or females? What do they like on Facebook? And in real life? Do they all speak English?

If you don’t know at least these basics about your audiences, how can you compare them, find similar ones, plan your campaigns and create relevant advertisements?

How do you know if your Facebook ad campaigns are meaningful to people on the platform? Stop guessing and start using Facebook Audience Insights to find answers.

Audience Insights is one of the most powerful (and free) tools that Facebook offers to give every business the knowledge they need to boost their Facebook ad campaigns results.

By using the Audience Insights tool to create customer profiles in this level of depth, you learn how to better tailor your content to your users as well as where to promote your content to ensure they read it.

Here’s everything you need to use Facebook Audience Insights to narrow your audience to perfection. Including a case study on how we use Audience Insights on AdEspresso Audiences.

How to Create a Google Ads Strategy Plan That Drives Results

February 4, 2019 5 Comments Brad Smith

Google Ads is one of the best platforms to drive sales and leads for your business.

But going in blind and expecting to strike it rich is a fool’s errand.

Google Ads takes serious skill, planning, and time.

If anyone could jump into Google Ads with zero plan of attack or strategy and make millions, we would.

But, we can’t.

With Google Ads, you need a strategy going in.

You need a planned budget, keywords, picking the right medium, creating ad groups, and landing pages, and even perfecting what call to action you are using.

Beyond that, Google Ads only continues to get more complex.

Ready to create your personal Google Ads strategy plan to drive results?

Here is how.

Buying Instagram Followers? Our Experiment Reveals The Truth…

January 24, 2019 1 Comment Animalz

Let’s be real—it’s very tempting to buy Instagram followers.

When every blogger and mom-and-pop store seems to have more followers than you, with hundreds of people blowing their comments and engagement rates through the roof, how are you supposed to compete?

With Instagram standing as one of the top sales platforms for e-commerce, the temptation to buy followers has never been stronger.

Get more followers, and even if they’re “fake”—the thinking goes—real people will take notice and start to shop in your store.

But does this theory hold any water? We set up an experiment to find out.

Academy

The Complete Guide to CPC Advertising (on Google, Facebook, and Instagram)

Facebook Video Thumbnail: Is it Essential for the Success of Your Ads? (a $1,000 Experiment)

How to Use Facebook Lookalike Audiences to Scale Your eCommerce Business

Why Google Ads Conversion Tracking Doesn’t Track All of Your Conversions

How to Use the Facebook Attribution Tool to Analyze and Optimize Your Customer Journey

Square Image vs. Landscape: What Works Best? (a $1,200 Experiment)

How To Find The Best Audiences To Target On Facebook

How to Create a Google Ads Strategy Plan That Drives Results

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