Paid Media - Mason Interactive

Facebook. Google. Instagram. TikTok. Roku. Netflix. The options are endless when it comes to digital advertising. Regardless of the products you sell, your audience is likely using at least one (if not all!) of the digital platforms. Mason’s Director of Media, Adrian Padron, shares his paid media tips for emerging D2C brands.

Define Your Superpower

“When running advertising campaigns, you need to consider the entire ecosystem, not just the advertising aspect of it”, Adrian said, “Advertising is one piece of the puzzle amongst UX, content, PR, goal tracking/measurement, partnerships, CRO, creative, and targeting strategies. When all the pieces work well, your advertising campaigns will be more successful.“

Let’s dive deeper into the puzzle theory. It all begins with your brand and the story you want to tell to your audience. Think of your brand voice, value proposition, positioning. Ask yourself: What is your superpower? What differentiates you from others? Essentially, advertising takes that message and connects it back to the right audience, at the right time, with the right intent.

Marketing tip for D2C brands - know your super power

Once your advertising campaigns have done their magic and brought new potential customers to your website, we start looking at UX, email flow, customer service, and so on. Is your website optimized for a seamless shopping experience? Have you set an email series to re-engage cart abandonments? Is your customer service ready to answer customers’ questions? All those pieces have to be figured out before your advertising can deliver desired results (= drive sales).

Know Your Advertising Goals

The next step towards successful advertising is knowing what you want to achieve. You may want to increase brand awareness, drive sales, or gain more subscribers. “You’d be surprised how many brands don’t have clear goals for their ad campaigns”, Adrian shares, “My recommendation for emerging D2C brands is to set holistic goals that are aligned with the verall business goals. Definite your goals before launching advertising campaigns so that your agency partner can track performance against those goals.”

Own Your Customer Data

Adrian brings up the recent changes to data privacy that impact all advertisers, emerging brands in particular. “Apple’s iOS 14.5 privacy policy changed the way we advertise. And things continue to evolve. Chrome’s cookie ban will be the next drastic change in the advertising industry. Because we have limited access to targeting and third party data, owning your customer data is critical.”

If you’re a startup or recently emerged, you may not have a lot of first party [customer] data yet. Start building your database by harvesting emails and numbers through giveaways, loyalty programs, and website pop up banners. Once in your ecosystem, nurture those leads and keep them engaged with your brand. You’ll need a solid content calendar for your D2C brand that includes email and social media, and is aligned with your promotional calendar. Regular communication builds loyalty.

Emerging D2C Brands can collect customer data through pop up forms — For example, Hella Cocktail collects customer data through pop up forms.

Adrian’s last tip for emerging D2C brands is to take it easy with promotions. “Avoid being too promotionally driven at the beginning, always keep your brand integrity at heart. First time discounts are a great way to give new customers a reason to get in your ecosystem. But they can also attract low-quality users (not potential customers).”

Are you ready to make it big with your paid media campaigns? We’re experts in Facebook, Google, Instagram, Amazon, TikTok, Snapchat, and Pinterest advertising. Contact us today to schedule a free consultation.

Mason Interactive recently partnered with Facebook to host a webinar on Facebook Discovery Commerce. The goal of the webinar was to teach attendees how to create a seamless shopping experience from discovery through purchase. The event was hosted by Karly Surman, Agency Partner Manager at Facebook, and Mira Valjakka, Director of Growth & Marketing at Mason Interactive.

Karly and Mira get down to the recent changes in the modern shopping journey and discuss how Facebook Discovery Commerce helps businesses engage with the new mindset of consumers. Continue reading for highlights and to get a better understanding of the four elements of Facebook Discovery Commerce:

Personalize – Set your business up for maximum value
Inspire – Embrace and master the dynamic surfaces where your creative shows up
Convert and retain – Optimize the paths you create to serve people and your objectives
Learn and optimize – Leverage tools to learn, sharpen and evolve your practices

Why Facebook Discovery Commerce

The shopping experience has changed in a fundamental way. The past model of shopping was intent-based; shoppers took action and made plans to make their purchases. The new model of shopping is serendipitous and integrated into the shopper’s daily life online. This has never been more apparent than it’s become in the last year.

In 2020, eCommerce grew by 30% and 57% of adults said they would spend more money online than in brick and mortar stores.

This change to the way customers view shopping means that the customer’s journey no longer starts at intent. Instead, it starts long before they consider buying something. Businesses now need to prioritize that personalized experience that nurtures customers in everyday life, not only when they’re actively seeking to purchase.

The new consumer journey starts well before intent. Image: Facebook.

The Four Elements of Facebook Discovery Commerce

Facebook advertising offers great conversion for eCommerce. 86% of shoppers who use Facebook weekly purchase fashion, beauty, furniture, and consumer electronics that they originally discovered on the platform.

Using the four elements of the Facebook Discovery Commerce system lets your business take advantage of this powerful modern shopping journey. The four elements are:

Personalization engine
Engaging surfaces
Advertising & conversion tools
Measurement & optimization tools

For marketers and eCommerce businesses, now is the perfect time to start thinking about the Holiday season. Getting a step ahead with Facebook Discovery Commerce will help you personalize the experience to get you in front of your customers now, so you don’t miss the small window coming up. With summer weather and everyone enjoying their vacations and activities, it might seem a little early. But, we all know that the Holiday season represents a large portion of yearly revenue.

As shoppers move to an always open to purchasing mindset, it’s never too early to engage and interact with your target audience on Facebook.

So let’s get into how the system works.

The four elements of Facebook Discovery Commerce. Image: Facebook.

The personalization engine

Facebook’s personalization engine is all about connecting with your customers. This tool helps you to connect with the exact people who are likely to love your business and products. That means more efficiency in your marketing and higher ROI. It also helps you to connect with your target audience across borders. There’s no limit to where you can find your audience. Facebook Discovery Commerce ad solutions help you create a completely personalized experience for your audience to capture engagement and propel conversion.

Engaging surfaces

With engaging surfaces, you can create a truly impressive user experience. Facebook’s mobile-first technology means that your audience gets responsiveness and easy-to-use features on any device. With images that pop and buttons that respond, you never have to worry about design that doesn’t fit the screen or features that frustrate your audience.

Advertising and conversion tools

Did you know that 88% of shopping carts were abandoned in March of 2020?

Nothing will make your customers abandon shopping carts as quickly as a complicated buying process. With Facebook’s advertising and conversion tools, you reduce the obstacles that cause customers to abandon ads and carts. Your dynamic ads drive action. Leveraging Facebook Discovery Commerce, you can say hello to a frictionless customer journey that’s not disrupted by slow loading pages, checkout errors, difficulties with reaching customer service, or any other issues that might turn your customers to a competitor.

Optimization and measurement tools

Advertising on Facebook, you get real-time measurement and optimization tools that let you perform testing, improve your campaigns, and truly measure growth. Advertising for today’s shopper isn’t a one-and-done event. You need to keep measuring how your ads are performing and make improvements. You also need to be able to add to your messaging as times and customers change.

Facebook Discovery Commerce gives businesses a versatile tool to propel ROI with modern shoppers. To learn more about improving your Facebook marketing efforts, and to prepare your marketing strategy for the Holiday sales, contact us today.

Over-The-Top (OTT) advertising is the new buzz word in the marketing industry. In the past year, we’ve seen a significant shift from Linear TV to Streaming TV. With 80% of U.S. households already subscribed to a streaming service, cord cutting hits record in 2020.

Increased popularity of Streaming TV sets the stage for OTT advertising. OTT, backed with smart targeting and measurement capabilities, is the most effective channel to reach large audiences on big screens.

Mason Interactive partnered with America’s #1 TV streaming platform, Roku, to host a webinar on Streaming TV and OTT advertising. Webinar hosts Chris LaHaise, Roku, and Adrian Padron, Mason Interactive, shared OTT advertising tips, tactics and best practices.

Watch the OTT advertising webinar replay here, or continue reading for webinar highlights. You’ll learn what OTT advertising really means, and how you can use Roku to build full-funnel, cross-device advertising campaigns.

What is OTT?

So, what exactly is OTT and why has it become so popular? OTT stands for “over the top” which is video content served to viewers from the internet instead of through cable, or broadcast – on any device. Examples of such platforms are Netflix, Prime Video, and Hulu. Also, you may have heard the term “Streaming TV” which refers to smart TVs, like Roku, Fire TV, or gaming devices like Playstation, that are connected to a television and have internet connection.

Today’s consumer wants more control over what they watch and when they watch it, and as a result, the industry has seen a shift from Linear TV to OTT and Streaming TV. This type of consumer is called a “cord cutter”.

On the webinar Chris shared the latest Streaming TV statistics: “Within the past year, streaming has grown at a faster rate when people stay indoors. In fact, Streaming TV is growing three times faster than Linear TV”.

How OTT advertising works?

Advertising on traditional Linear TV is based on finding content that you think makes most sense to your target audience. For example, if your target consumer is a sports fan, you may buy ad placements during a football game. If you’re looking for a bespoke audience, it can become more difficult to reach the right audience with Linear TV.

With OTT advertising, ad placements are based on viewership. Advertisers can reach users wherever they are, not just where they might be. Thanks to smart targeting and audience insights, campaigns are more effective and deliver better return on advertising spend.

Now that we’ve compared OTT advertising to advertising on Linear TV, let’s look at how streaming dominates consumer behavior across digital channels. An average consumer spends 53 minutes on social, 11 minutes on search, 43 minutes on shopping, and 99 minutes on streaming platforms every day (eMarketer).

Streaming is a huge opportunity for advertisers

Why advertise with Roku

With 50M+ active accounts, Roku is America’s #1 TV Streaming platform. It has the highest OTT market share leaving behind competitors like Fire TV, Chromecast, and Apple TV. Roku’s Audience Network consists of over 100 premium channels, and it also has its own channel, Roku Channel.

To give you a full view of the opportunity, let’s dive into a few commonly asked questions about OTT advertising and Roku.

How do I advertise on Roku?

Roku’s self-serve OneView Ad Platform is one of the biggest perks of advertising on Roku. Thanks to its incremental reach, you can reach 4 out of 5 homes in America with OneView. And you’re not limited by any one media type or device. Through the platform you’ll be able to manage your entire campaign all in one place, and run video, display, banner, and audio campaigns on any ad platform.

Advertisers have access to instant forecasting and insights before,  during, and after  a campaign. You can monitor insights such as site visits, location attribution, audience insights, and you can even see inventory recommendations.

How Roku gathers consumer insights?

The advertising industry is rapidly moving towards a privacy-first, cookie-less environment where access to third party data will be limited. First party data will become the golden ticket needed to continue effective advertising efforts. When advertising on Roku, everything is centered around Roku’s first party data that lives on the platform itself. Roku’s streamer profile data has the information on who the user is, how they behave, and what they watch. Advertisers can expand targeting by leveraging third party data sets for additional reach, all in OneView platform.

“Roku profile data combined with third party data sets expands what’s possible, giving you the opportunity to do as much as you can all in one place”, Chris shares.

Moreover, Roku is the operating system for one in three new smart TVs in America. This means that these smart TVs have Roku software already built in. Leveraging the software, Roku can read the screen to understand what the user is watching not only on the Roku app, but also on Linear TV.

Can I use OTT advertising for a full-funnel approach?

Today’s customer journey has multiple touch points on various devices, beyond the TV screen. Picture Matt who is watching his favorite show on his living room couch. An ad for your brand shows up on the TV screen and caughts Matt’s interest. The next day on his commute to work, Matt sees your brand’s banner ad on his mobile device. Later that day, Matt is in the office and visits your website on his laptop to make a purchase.

A full-funnel strategy enables a seamless customer journey just like Matt’s. With Roku and OTT advertising, advertisers can reach their audience across devices, and best of all, advertisers can measure and track the entire journey from awareness to purchase.

What if the user has an ad-free subscription?

OneView platform has a range of unique targeting options that allows you to build your ideal audience. We already discussed the power of Roku’s first party data, and how that combined with third party data gives you more effective targeting opportunities.

Roku’s unique targeting options allows you to reach your audience even if they’re using ad-free subscriptions. Your target user may prefer to watch their favorite shows on Netflix without an ad in sight. Subscriptions like Netflix or Hulu, where consumers pay a flat monthly rate to consume content, are called SVODs (subscription video on demand). Within Roku, advertisers can add SVOD users into a target group and reach them through mobile and desktop campaigns.

Roku Streaming Guide is an example of OTT advertising

Advertisers can use Roku’s streaming guide to get in front of users who don’t watch ad-supported content but use Roku’s streaming device to watch Netflix.

Can I find out who sees my competitor’s ads?

OneView platform allows you to find households that have recently seen your competitor’s ads on Streaming TV or Linear TV. Tap into the opportunity to expand your market share and ensure consumers won’t only hear from your competitor, but from you as well.

How to get started with Roku advertising

Are you ready to join other marketers on the new wave of advertising? Partnering with Mason Interactive on your OTT advertising campaigns, you enjoy a low barrier to entry without minimum ad spend requirements. Schedule a free consultation with our OTT advertising experts to build a customized solution. During the consultation we will look at your unique needs, your Roku audience size, and run a go-to-market test for your brand.

Apple’s upcoming iOS 14 privacy update and Google’s Privacy Sandbox are the latest examples of the evolving digital advertising ecosystem. Big data has dominated the digital advertising industry, but today the focus is on protecting user privacy.

The Shift Towards Privacy-First Advertising

During our recent webinar, iOS 14 for Advertisers, Mason Interactive’s Founder and CEO, Brook Shepard, and Director of Media, Adrian Padron, explored Apple’s new privacy policy that is planned to roll out this Spring.

“iOS 14 will be one of the most dramatic changes to the advertising industry”, Brook began the webinar. “It doesn’t have to have a negative impact on your ad campaigns, but to avoid disruption advertisers need to prepare now.”

We summarized the webinar highlights, including a walkthrough of how iOS 14 is going to impact Facebook and Instagram ad campaigns.

How iOS 14 is Going to Impact the Digital Advertising Ecosystem

Let’s start from the very basics of digital advertising. Have you ever felt like your phone is listening to your conversations? When an ad pops up on your screen from a brand you talked about with your friend just a few hours ago? Well, your phone is not listening to you. It all comes down to data.

Digital advertising is a combination of psychographic (ie. interests, personality) and demographic data (ie. age, location) that is matched to occasions (ie. birthdays, holidays). “Demographic data is that I live in Brooklyn and psychographic data is that I like guitars. If my birthday was coming up, that would be the occasion for advertisers to serve me guitar ads”, Brook sets an example.

Now how does an advertising giant like Facebook know all this about its users? Data sharing happens on the background of mobile apps, and data is collected every time you interact with apps on your phone. Whenever you sign up to a new app, you agree to the digital terms and conditions of the app that allows data sharing. Facebook has partnerships with several apps who pass the information from their apps to providers like Facebook to help build that cross-app profile of psychographic information.

With the new iOS 14 update, apps must get a user’s permission to access their data through Apple’s App Tracking Transparency (ATT) prompt. When opening an app for the first time, users will see a pop-up prompt that allows them to revoke or grant tracking permissions.

Unless the user opts in, Apple’s policy will prohibit the app to collect and share certain user data. And how does it impact your ad campaigns? Simply put, less data means less personalization and limited reporting.

How Apple's App Tracking Transparency prompt will impact advertisers

New Attribution Changes Reporting

The ATT prompt will be the biggest focus for advertisers. Another new requirement from Apple is the data nutrition label that requires all apps in the Apple Store submit information about their app’s data collection practices. In addition, platforms will need to use a new framework that may restrict, aggregate, and delay event reporting.

Facebook has already implemented some changes to its advertising platform to comply with the new privacy update. In January, Facebook changed its default attribution window from 28-day to a 7-day click and 1-day view attribution. As a result, reporting has changed, and some advertisers may have seen a decrease in the number of reported conversions on their Facebook and Instagram campaigns. However, this doesn’t mean that your performance is down. The same conversions are happening, but the platform is just reporting differently due to a shorter attribution window.

Limited Conversion Events

Apple’s new web attribution protocol, Private Click Measurement (PCM), will not support app-to-web conversion measurement or cross-domain measurement. Therefore, PCM will impact how customer journeys between devices and platforms are reported.

Facebook has created Aggregated Event Measurement (AEM) protocol to allow for measurement of web events. AEM supports app-web attribution and helps app-to-browser conversion flow, but the number of conversion events reported will be limited. Previously, advertisers were able to optimize and report for unlimited conversion events. With AEM, advertisers can optimize and report for up to 8 events.

Moreover, if the user opts out through Apple’s new ATT prompt, Facebook is allowed to receive information on only one event completed after the click. In a scenario where a customer clicks an ad to land on your website, adds items to a cart, and makes a purchase all in one session, only the higher prioritized event will be reported.

“It’s essential to configure your conversion events now.”

“It’s essential to configure your events now”, Adrian encourages. “Select conversion events that provide the most value to your business and organize them in order of priority so that Facebook can report accordingly”.

Data delay will be another significant change when running Facebook and Instagram ad campaigns after the rollout. If you want to add or remove an event, or change the configuration, optimizing those ads and ad sets will be paused for 3 days. During this 3-day period, you cannot make any optimization changes such as budget alterations, pause underperforming creatives, or change bid rules. It will become crucial for advertisers to plan more diligently and in advance, especially leading up to big events such as Black Friday.

Visual summary of the reporting and audience changes the new attribution will bring

What to do next to minimize disruption?

Testing new marketing strategies and evolving existing practices will help advertisers meet their digital marketing goals when the new Apple iOS 14 privacy update rolls out. Brook and Adrian listed the recommended next steps for advertisers looking to prepare and optimize their advertising strategies to the upcoming changes.

Rethink Success

Focus on your overall business goals. Build an omnichannel strategy that combines each channel into a holistic structure. This helps you provide a seamless user experience across all channels along the consumer journey.

Diversify Your Media Mix

Looking beyond the duopoly of Facebook and Google, content marketing and SEO will play a big role in a successful marketing strategy, alongside new channels such as programmatic and OTT advertising.

Own Your Customer Data

When third-party data is out of the advertising equation, first-party data becomes more important than ever. Collect your customer data through loyalty programs, pop-ups, offer incentives, and SMS messages. This will help you create your own customer profiles that make your marketing more effective and efficient.

iOS 14 and the move toward a privacy-driven digital advertising ecosystem doesn’t have to come at the cost of marketing results. Forward-thinking marketers will turn the upcoming changes into new opportunities, while using data responsibly.

Schedule a free digital marketing consultation with our digital experts to explore new marketing opportunities and ways to future-proof your strategy.

Are you currently running ads on Facebook? Did you know that running too many ads at the same time can decrease your overall account performance? When there are too many ads live, chances are your ads will never exit the learning phase. This is why Facebook is implementing a limit to the number of ads running (or under review) per page.

What is the Learning Phase?

The Facebook learning phase is an important part of the optimization process. The learning phase works by optimizing your ad set to your selected objective. The more an ad is served, the better the delivery system becomes at improving its performance. An ad set will exit the learning phase when its performance stabilizes. When an account has too many ads in rotation, they may never exit the learning phase and the system will not have enough data to prioritize what is performing best.

What are They Limiting By?

Facebook will be limiting the amount of ads a page can serve. If your account is running efficiently, this should not be an issue for you. The more you spend on Facebook, the more ads you will be able to serve. Ad limits range from 250 ads per page, to 20,000 ads per page. Ad limits depend on the size of your business and the amount you spend on each page.

How do I know what my ad limit is?

Ad limits vary depending on the amount you spend on the Facebook platform. The less you spend per month, the less ads you are able to run. You can see the ad limit for each of your pages by navigating to the Ad Limits Per Page tool in your Business Manager.

How Will This Affect Me?

Chances are this change in policy will not affect your business. If your account is optimized properly, and you are running an efficient amount of ads per ad set, your page will not be harmed by this update. Companies of any size will still be able to test hundreds of ads at a time, but ad limits ensure that advertisers spend their budget in an effective way.

Making sure that accounts are optimized properly is the best way to remain unaffected by this ad limit. Our team of digital marketing experts optimizes each account according to clients’ goals. Contact us for more information or schedule a free marketing analysis with one of our digital marketing experts to see how we can help you.

On Sept 30th 2020, Facebook announced a change to its attribution model. As of October 12th, Facebook (and Instagram) are moving from a default 28 day click, to a 7 day click.

This means that advertisers will see fewer sales reported in the Facebook platform, but that actual sales/leads/events tracked in your Salesforce/Shopify/CRM will not be affected.

“Rolling this change out pre-holiday is surprising, but 2020 is the gift that keeps on giving.” says Adrian Padron, Mason Interactive’s Director of Media. “Facebook is adjusting its default attribution window because of upcoming digital privacy initiatives affecting multiple browsers, chiefly Chrome. These initiatives are expected to limit businesses’ ability to measure peoples’ interactions across domains and devices.”

Said plainly, the 28 day default window, a crucial component in the Facebook algorithm, is about to be modified in response to Google Chrome limiting what the browser passes back to Facebook.

This will have an impact on the capability of Facebooks’ machine learning. The logic seems to be, “Better to give the machine cleaner and more recent data, rather than spotty data from a larger window of time.”

What does this mean for you after October 12?

Moving from a 28 day click attribution window to a 7 day click ultimately means fewer conversions being attributed to your Facebook pixel
You will have a better picture of the immediate impact of ads

At Mason Interactive, no matter what vertical your partnership falls under, we always focus on your goals. Referencing the platform data is only one piece of the puzzle. It is a guiding force for our teams to make optimization decisions.

We always have to remember that machine learning and AI based bidding algorithms are getting better everyday. We also need to remember that one consumer journey can have multiple touchpoints. The pixel attributed performance is a proxy for making decisions and even though this change is coming, the way in which we work with our partners will not change because we stay focused on key goal goals and a backend source of truth.

Not sure what attribution means for your sales?

Check out the video below to learn more.