Welcome back everyone and happy New Year. Super excited to get started again with the podcast. Now this week I have a super exciting episode that I've been keeping under wraps for a while. I, when I first started doing Facebook ads back in God, five plus years ago, when I started going deep, The person who I turned to for advice and information online was John Loomer and anyone else who's been in the industry as long as I have will know that John Loomer is the original gangster, the OG of information about how Facebook ads works.

I signed up for his course. Gosh, yeah, at least five or six years ago joined his community and learned so much from him. It was always his website and his pod, his, uh, podcast as well as his blog post that I turned to, to find information about ads. And he recently popped up on my TikTok with some amazing content and came back into my world.

And it was part of that, that we formed a relationship and I asked him to come on my podcast. So I got to. One of my heroes, one of the people I originally learned from when I first came into this world on the podcast, and I'm super excited to share the episode with you. So for those of you who don't know who John Loom is, you need to go and follow him on all the channels because he has amazing content.

He keeps the community really up to date about what's happening in our world. John has published over a thousand blog posts helping marketers to navigate the fast-changing world of ads, and he runs a community of advanced Facebook marketers who he supports in getting the best from the. . In this episode we talked about some of the exciting changes on the platform, the recently reintroduced 28 day attribution, value-based delivery Advantage Plus, and how it's working.

We talked about using landing pages for more accurate tracking. We had a good chat about the inherent biases of the algorithm, and I found it really interesting to kind of jam with with John about that. We talked about how the media buying landscape is changing and the drawbacks of automat. And we discussed why talking to people at every stage of the funnel is still important.

And then we touched on TikTok ads, John Luma's experience so far, and why he's so bullish about the platform. So without further ado, let's dive into the episode. You're gonna get a ton out of this one, and, uh, hope you enjoy it.

Cool. Hi Jon, and welcome to the podcast. Hey Jessie. Thanks so much for having me. No worries at all. So, I would love it if you could bring us up to speed on your business. What your business constitutes nowadays, and what you've been working on, and what your focus is at the moment.

Yeah, so my business has existed in some form or another for over 11 years now. So I, I was laid off twice the second time being in 2011, and decided I didn't really wanna be laid off again, so I, I started a website and just just wrote about the, the things I knew and I had, I had a background.

The early kinda social media marketing and advertising. I, I well, I was with the National Basketball Association in 2007. We partnered with the, with Facebook. So that was way, way, way back for Facebook. Yeah. Early days. Yeah. So one of the primary topics I was writing about really beginning of 2012 was, was Facebook marketing and then Facebook advertising.

And then I was building a, an audience and decided one day to finally sell something. It wasn't until like a year later, I actually started selling stuff, and so I've been focused primarily on Facebook ads education primarily for advanced advertisers, for the, for the last decade plus. And so my business, I, I went away from, you know, managing ads from my other for others, within the first three or four years.

Yeah. And my, so my focus is all. My community. So I have a paid community where we, we meet every week with strategy sessions. We have weekly webinars. You know, people share their, their issues, their obstacles, and you know, we try to solve it for one another. You know, that kind of thing. Get access to all my training.

So this is all. Housed online. So that's, that's really the, the nature of my business these days is trying to keep everybody updated on all the, all the things that are happening and the changes and the obstacles surrounding primarily Facebook ads education. Yeah, exactly. And so I guess having had that group and that community for so long as you access to.

A lot of data about what's working and what's not working, as well as your own accounts that you manage for your own business. Right, Right. I see a lot what, what people are dealing with, even if they're not promoting the kind of stuff that I'm promoting, that they have completely different challenges.

Yeah, definitely. So, big question for you. So what are the big, what have been the big changes on the meta platform lately?

Yeah. So many changes. So initially when all that iOS stuff happened beginning of 2021 that significantly impact. Attribution. So basically well tracking and attributes. So Facebook being able to show you whether your advertising was leading to conversions and how many but also that would impact your, your custom audiences, so the people you're targeting whether they would be in those audiences anymore.

And ultimately probably optimization as well, because if Facebook doesn't know those conversions we're. Optimization, which is what helps them know whether they're heading in the right direction or they should try something different, you know, with the algorithm. That probably impacted advertising negatively as well.

Yeah. So what, so that, that all happened, that's been a big challenge over the last. Almost two years. Mm-hmm. But really a year and a half. But something has changed lately, which has been good for once. I mean, we haven't had a positive development for Facebook advertising really since iOS, So this is big.

So there, there are three things that went away during that time. One was 28 day click attribution. So originally the definition of a convers. Was anyone who clicked on your ad and converted within 28 days or just saw your ad without clicking and converted within a day. The problem was, you know, once that went away and now all we had was seven day click, one day view. If you've got a product that's a high, high price point or it's a big commitment and people are less likely to convert within that first seven days, your ad no longer gets credit for those conversions that happen between days eight and 28, and as the result, even, like even if you weren't.

Even if your customers weren't on iOS, even if opt-outs had nothing, Right, no impact on you, you were seeing negative impact because of this. So like, unless all you did was sell stuff that's like $10 or like just like free opt-ins and stuff, anything that happens within a couple days. , everybody else, you, you would've seen a drop in conversions due to that, that loss.

Why did Facebook do that? Do you have any insight? Because Google didn't. And like we as an agency owner, as agency owners, like trying to explain this to clients, it's very difficult and they, they just think Google works better.

Right. Well, that's actually a good point. Yeah, no I don't recall a good, concise, clear reason other than, you know, a loss in confidence in the data that that was incomplete. Right. This is the way I kind of interpret what happened. It was late 2020 that they seemed to know this was coming, or at least they started telling advertisers that this was.

they were not prepared, basically. And so I think the result of that was, They were overly conservative on some of the things they took away.

Mm. Like for example, I have no idea why they took away compare attribution windows. Mm. That that feature where it's like, okay, of the conversions I had, how many of them fell within seven day click? How many were one day click? How many were one day view? Yeah. That was really, really helpful for when you do remarketing campaigns and people are also getting your emails and.

You might be like, Oh, those, those numbers seem crazy. I wonder how many of those were viewed through cuz because they just received my email and acted on that, right? Yeah. So that went away, which really hurt in terms of context, like of understanding those kinds of questions or the answers. So, but little like things like that went away, the 20 day click, the ability to break down conversions within the breakdowns, like by placement, things like that.

So, So my interpretation really, They took the conservative route on all these things. They took it away you know, protecting themselves potentially, but. Looking back on it, it doesn't totally make sense. Mm. Right, Because for example, let's, let's just use 28 day click as an example. Let's say for, let's say that they lost confidence in that data beyond seven day click, because it was incomplete.

I don't know if it's incomplete, but let's just say it's incomplete and like their models don't, don't track it well and whatnot. I guess my answer to that would be like, who cares? Like why? Why? Like, let's say it's incomplete for anyone who opted out. Well, you still have people who opted in. Even if it's 10%, who cares? And then it's like Then you've got people who aren't on iOS devices. Like even if you're telling me it's incomplete, I've got. 20% more conversions that that would be reported.

I'd want that data, like I don't understand. Why that went away. But anyway, so all, all three of those things I just mentioned, the compare attribution windows is back, which is thankfully the 28 day click and the ability to break down now the breakdowns of conversions, violate placement and things like that.

I think it's still rolling out cause I don't have it completely at this point. Mm-hmm. . But those things are all going to be very helpful. Yeah, totally. And. Not least for like, I think agencies like really got it in the neck because we are kind of the interface with Facebook. I mean between with our client, Between our clients and Facebook.

And we find ourselves in this position sometimes of kind of defending the results. Right. And having, you know, A lot of our clients sell stuff that's, well by definition actually in econ, you have to work with brands that are, have a higher average order value because low average order value with the ad cost the way they are, isn't really a viable, scalable model anymore.

So by definition, people are making decisions outside of seven days and it's really hard to explain to clients that there are conversions happening that they can't see and explain when you, you know, they hear attribution model and last click, first click, and their eyes gls over and it's very difficult.

I mean, Facebook probably doesn't care about agencies, but they did make it difficult. They should for people. Yeah, they should. And they did make it difficult for not just agencies, but you know, smaller brands to understand. I'm sure people turned off their advertising because they thought it wasn't working.

Mm-hmm. . Yeah. Well, and I mean, there's some things you could have done that would've helped a little bit, you know, over the last year and a half, like using URL parameters and, and Google Analytics or Universal Analytics or whatever. We're calling it these GA four as well. Yeah. So that could have helped, like, trading unique landing pages so that, that, you know, that anyone who comes through that landing page came from your ad.

You know, just little things like that. But or, or really just keeping an eye on. Generally, you know, are your conversions going up or down? I mean, cuz look, if, if your sales are way down from what they were pre iOS, then yeah, there's probably something else going on. But I think what, yeah, what might have been happening in some cases is like, well, The client doesn't actually have fewer conversions, it's just that we're reporting less to them.

Mm. And can take credit for fewer of them. Yeah. I think it was really tough for E-com too, because this all happened just as lockdowns were ending. Right. So people weren't shopping online quite as much. They were spending money on experiences instead.

So combined with that, and then there was, I mean, other woes. Stock issues too. So like if they're stocks, you know, that they don't have all the colors or the sizes, then that's gonna impact conversion rates too. And then it becomes really difficult with so many different variables that are changing so fast to decide whether it's like Facebook is broken, the industry's broken.

A bit of both probably. I think it is. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Cool. So, I mean, it's still gonna be tough. It'll still be tough for a while, you know, like I don't, it's, we're never gonna go back to the way it used to be. Yeah. And so we're gonna have to rely on some modeling and, I don't know, guesswork, whatever.

But yeah, Correlation. Good old correlation. . Yeah. So, so we've seen these, so obviously the data supply to Facebook kind of got cut off. We always talk about about it. The blood to its brain, so it has less ability to optimize as well as it could. So potentially the performance is not as good, but then the tracking also is not as good.

How have you and your clients adapted to these changes in terms of your media buying? Like how has it changed the way you guys do media buying over the last couple of years? In terms of the, The tracking and optimization? Yeah, just like how you approach things. Yeah. How do you approach like audience size?

Oh yeah. The setup of like, the accounts. Is it different? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, first of all, the audience size, so all this happened at around the same time that it's, it's weird actually. Facebook has gone more and more towards automation. I think the algorithm has probably gotten better, especially in some cases.

So like if you're talking e. And you've got so if you're a company that has a brand a product catalog, and it's in a specific category of, of product and Facebook has that catalog, Facebook also knows that other people, the people have viewed other catalogs in that same category. So things like that, I think Facebook has gotten really good at.

So if you're in e-com to say, Well, I'm not, because the way dynamic ads, for example, used to be back in the day was, was only a matter of remarketing. Yeah. To people who, okay, they hit my website, they hit my landing page, they didn't convert. Those things are great. Yeah. But what, what they do now is more of like, I know this.

That person may not even know who you are, but Facebook knows that they've been engaging with this type of product from a different brand. Yeah. And can show, can show your ads. So it's things like that where like, yes, going broader in those cases seems to be the way to go. I, I still have a huge beef with Facebook regarding like my type of business where it's not just selling.

But like I want to drive traffic to my website to read, read stuff I've written, or I want people to watch a video or something like that. That type of optimization is so surface level engagement that it's just usually not done very well. Right. So for, so for ex it takes advantage of the system. So like we is the system.

So if like example, if you wanna just drive traffic to read a blog post and use the traffic objective and optimize for landing page, user link, click. The way optimization works, which is great for E-com, is Facebook's gonna try to get you as many of those things that you want. In this case could be a a link click for the lowest cost possible.

Yeah, but the problem is they can get a ton of those for you. That are low quality based on things like placement where you have audience network and people clicking things automatically, or there's, there's click fraud, or there's just all kinds of stuff that's happening with certain placements that leads to traffic.

And Facebook thinks, Oh, we got you exactly what you wanted because you wanted traffic. Yeah. And then meanwhile you're looking at your metrics and you're like, These people are immediately leaving my website. I didn't want this. Yeah. Right. So there are things like that where it's. I think Facebook has a long ways to go in terms of their optimization, in terms of, I think there's a layer that they can add for a lot of these things.

It's, it's quality. Say, Okay, I don't just want link clicks, I want quality traffic. I don't just want engagement on my posts. I want people who share, I want people who. Used to love emo, like you could pick which reaction, you know, things like that. Like I don't really understand why a quality layer isn't available.

It's just give me as many of them as possible for the lowest cost, and in some cases, that's not really preferred. Yeah, it's so interesting. It's such a good point because we've always advised our clients a way for away from using traffic. The traffic optimization goal? Yeah, for econ, because you just like exactly as you described, you just get the kind of low quality traffic that clicks on stuff.

But the argument that a client would make, and actually Facebook makes this argument too, that their advisors are always advising econ brands to do traffic at the top of the funnel is that you need to kind of grow awareness first, and then after that awareness happens, then. You know, retarget them and they convert, which in theory sounds great, but the problem is because of the way the algorithm works, it's not trying to find you people with intent to buy or who buy things online often, or who are shopping for that type of product at the moment.

It's literally just blindly going after the goal of traffic. Yeah, and so we find that budget just gets wasted when we add a traffic layer to our campaigns. The ROS goes down because we've spent more money on an, on a portion of traffic that's so low quality that it doesn't work. So we pretty much flat out advise against it.

We'll go for say we might optimize, we might do a lead gen campaign, so we optimize to get people onto their email list and hook them with something that hopefully identifies them as relevant to the brand. Even that though, like we sort of see a bit of a mix of quality with that. And I always, yeah, I always say like, try and have something that you can, that can identify the quality of the user, right?

Rather than just pouring traffic into an objective that just. It ends up being a vanity metric, doesn't it? Yeah. So that's a really great point. They need that kind of quality, like it's an engaged traffic or it's traffic with intent rather than just any odd traffic. And cuz they advise broad, we're not able to control.

Oh yeah. Well the problem with that is like, yeah, they'll say, Oh yeah, we, we recommend you go abroad and that you use all placements and that you, you need the top of the funnel. Well, that's where the problems. because that the algorithm isn't smart to weed out the low quality stuff. So like I think, I think there could be the argument for traffic if you can be assured that the people clicking are mostly doing so cause they want to and they're actually people.

And that part of that is eliminating the audience network place. So right away you're doing something Facebook doesn't want you to do though. Cause they're always like, Oh no, use all placements. Yeah. And let the algorithm do this work. But that's, that's where it becomes problematic. But the other thing is like So I use custom events on my website to measure like quality traffic actions, right?

So people who, based on time that they've spent on a page, whether they're scrolling, whether they've clicked one of the sa, the share buttons whether they've clicked to play a podcast player that's embedded on a lot of my blog posts or click to play a YouTube video. It's embedded on a lot of my blog posts, right?

So like I have all those things firing. So that's, that's the first thing. Let's not assume it's never gonna work to optimize for like a link click landing page view. Yeah. Let let Facebook prove it to you and use those custom events so you can then track the quality of the traffic uhhuh, But, and you can.

I go back and forth on this one. It is something I originally talked about like over a year ago, maybe a year and a half ago. You can also optimize for those custom events. Yeah, I, I've seen mixed results with that. Sometimes I feel like it's actually working and it increases the, the quality traffic.

Sometimes I think the Facebook, just like when it's a custom event, they just throw it into. General bucket, They don't really see, Oh, we want people who actually spend two minutes under the page or something like that. So, Right. There are various things that still try, but it, it is a challenge when you're talking about sending people to your website for something other than a purchase or you're like, Oh, I just wanna generally send traffic.

Like you can't apply the same rules that, let's say a website has that, that they might say, Oh, we, we tend to have a 10% conversion rate or, So the assumption would be, oh, okay, if I use a traffic campaign and I send, you know, a hundred people, then 10 of them are gonna buy. Yeah, it's gonna work. And you might find that none of them buy because of the quality of that traffic.

So, Yeah. Yeah. That's so interesting. I really think Facebook could find a way to solve that. Cause the other problem is like, We, we are really limiting ourselves in econ to this kind of highly engaged, you know, actually nowadays an audience of impulse buyers. So we are getting in front of these people that buyers in seven days are seeing an ad because that's what we're optimizing towards.

What about all the other people that just like to research things, like to kind of hang out in your funnel or on your email list for longer? We're not able to optimize for that level of interest or that level of quality. And so all of those people kind of missing out on seeing our brand and seeing what we're all about because Facebook's really going towards these impulse buyers by and large.

Yeah. And it really, it really hurts any type of product that is, takes a while to make a decision on. Yeah, totally. So, unless. You know, even if, I think what Facebook is gonna counter is, is like, okay, even if you're promoting something that's high priced, you have to keep promoting it. And it's like eventually that one ad are gonna click and convert.

That's gonna be what puts 'em over. But kinda like what you're saying, it's not always the case. Like they're gonna be doing some other research. They might be on your email list, you know what, it might take a month or so to, to get them through that funnel. And I'm okay with that. But unfortunately it's not great.

Attribution. So. Yeah, exactly. So what sort of, and I know you, you probably answer will be, it depends, but , I'd be interested to hear what what setups you're mostly using these days. Like cbo, abo, you know, number of ads for ad set, audience size. Do you have any kind of general rules of thumb or do you think it really depends?

So I, I do, I do different things. I mean, generally I, I try not to complicate. Right. So for example, if I'm promoting something that has very different audiences, that will require a different message potentially, then yeah, I'll create a different ad set for each one. Yeah. And then. Probably different copy and creative for, for each one as well.

Yeah. But I also look at it generally as you've got top of the funnel, you've got middle of the funnel and you've got bottom. Yeah. And so, I'm not promoting driving traffic these days right now. I mean, within the last month that probably was, but like right now, I'm, I'm promoting some of my reels, you know, that guy's, one of the things I'm doing right now is like, yeah.

Trying, trying to get engagement with that stuff. Little bit of top of the funnel. And there's middle of the funnel. I'm, I'm building my email list and then bottom of the funnel, I'm selling something. Normally for me, when I sell something, I'm targeting small audience. And in some cases super small.

Like sometimes I'll just do the. Abandoned cart scenario, like where you hit the landing page and didn't convert. I don't have a add to cart. So like you hit the landing page and didn't convert something like that, and I'll throw a video at you and this could be just like a few hundred people who see it.

But that, you know, so I, I, I still do that kind of old school method as well, but mm-hmm. I think generally, and you've, I'm sure you've seen this, if, if you want to sell a product that's, you know, $150 or so, or. You've gotta spend a ton in order for Facebook to get out of that learning phase. Yeah, so I, I found it to be more efficient to do, and, and I also don't want to, and this is again, up to every business I have found, it's smarter.

To have more of a long term approach and that I, I want to attract new people into the funnel. I want to get people add to my email list. I don't really want that impulse buy though of people who stumble on me for the first time, cuz they then they like buy a course. I'm like, I don't like the way you teach, or, you know, whatever it is.

And it is like, well if you would've been following any of my stuff, you would know exactly how I teach. Right? Yeah. So I, I do prefer more of. You know, when I, when I go broad, I usually don't use it for selling stuff. Something. Now that's gonna be different for an econ business, obviously. Mm. But so when it comes to creative though, too, like, I think it used to be that Oh yeah.

You create, you test a whole bunch of different copy and creative whatnot. The way, the way Facebook was going. Now this is just a matter of like where, where you trust Facebook, but this is where it's going, is that you don't necessarily have to generate a whole bunch of options of, of like copy and creative or of of ads, actual ads.

Like you could do it all within one ad, right? Yeah. You can provide multiple headlines. Mul, multiple text options multiple descriptions, multiple creative, and Facebook will even turn, turn images into videos. And they do all kinds of crazy stuff. I don't really know what they're doing, which is a little weird.

Yeah. And. And they'll mix and match and supposedly find you the best possible results. So that's where it's going. In terms of like CBO and whatnot, I mean, I will only use CBO if it's a situation where I've got two different ad sets or, or more that have similar audience sizes in them. Yeah.

Because otherwise what's gonna happen is the patient's just naturally gonna spend most of the money on, on the bigger audience and which kind of makes sense, but, but at least if there's similar audience sizes, then. The performance actually matters. Yeah. It'll kind of balance between them. Yeah, I see what you mean.

Right? Yeah. We, we generally in the agency at the moment use abo. There's been times when CBO has been bigger for us, but ABO seems to just be the easiest way to control things. And to kind of manually scale what needs to scale, what we see working. Yeah. Yeah. Advantage plus you talk about what, what you've seen so far with that and what you, what you think about it.

Well first of all, there's all kinds of Advantage plus branding right now. Some of it is just stuff that is all has existed for years and they just changed the name of it. So like automatic placements is now Advantage plus placements, and that's been around forever. Where Facebook optimizes the cause, it's, they're not gonna distribute your ad equally between all the placements.

They're gonna determine what's work. Yeah. But Avan, so we've got advantaged lookalikes, which was look like expansion Advantage. What, what's that one? The, the, Oh man, I can't, I can't remember the, the name of it for the interest expansion expanded audiences. It, it's, it's one of those type, it's, it's basically the it's advantage.

Oh, geez, I can't . Anyway, there are three different type Cause there's, there's also one for custom audiences now too. Yeah. But there are three different types of expansion Yeah. That are advantage plus that it's basically like I'm telling you to target this group of people. If Facebook thinks that they can get you more and better results.

Yeah. That'll automatically expand it. So, There's a, in theory, how this works and there's a fear of what's actually happening. Yeah. So, and I think I was largely driven by the fear of what's actually happening. Originally when these came out, was this like, well, I didn't want to target a broader audience.

I wanted you to target just this group. Right? Yeah. And then, Unfortunately, like on the sidebar it says your potential audience size, and now it's just like enormous. It's just millions and millions of people. And like, I didn't want that. I just wanna target this group. And you don't have the option to turn that off in some cases too, depending on the optimization.

Yeah. So that's, that sounded scary. But in theory though, the way it's supposed to work is that it, they will only expand, only expand the audience if it can lead to more and better. And it doesn't mean they're gonna expand it a lot. Yeah, they could. They could expand it just a tiny bit. It could happen and then, then they're not, My biggest issue with that Advantage plus stuff, and really all the Advantage, plus creative and all the ad stuff too, is that we're just supposed to trust it.

Yeah, you're like, We don't know if it was actually like, I don't know if my audience was actually expanded. It's just that they have the ability to, if they want to. Interesting. There's not like, So really what is needed is a breakdown option to give me one row for this is the audience I set to target, and these are all the results.

Yeah. In one row for this is the expanded audience and how much was spent there and Oh, yeah, I did get better results was because, Yeah. And the same thing with all the, the creative stuff. I don't know why that doesn't exist. But yeah, so, so that's a long roundabout way of saying, so the Advantage Plus is largely automation.

Algorithmic things where it's like taking control or taking control away from us really of doing things in Facebook saying, Oh, we know better than you. Let us optimize this. This for you. Yeah, and like some of the Advantage Plus campaign creation. Options are basically like they're stripping away defaults like ability to, ability to change defaults, and you'll just have a few things that you can change.

And so it streamlines it, it simplifies it. It's probably better for you know, newer advertisers, but really it, that's what Advanced Plus is. It's automation and less control. Yeah, exactly. Hopefully better results, but, Yeah. Well, what we have seen for the audience benefit is we've seen lower cpm. So the cost of getting in front of people is cheaper, which we typically see when Facebook's trying to push out a new product.

They'll kind of like incentivize the advertisers by giving it to you for cheaper, basically. It's like a early use discount in a way, and lower conversion rates. But for us, those two are balanced out. So overall, the ROS has been, But my question is basically Facebook's algorithm has to catch up and get better quickly in order to catch up with the fact that the CPMs will rise to be where they, you know, they should end up the same as CPMs for other parts of the account.

Right? So at this point, I don't believe that the algorithm for Advantage Plus is mature enough. To actually deliver better results if the CPMs were the same, but we're still using it cause we're getting better and we wanna train the algorithm to understand our business. Our business. Yeah, and I guess that that just also assumes that the, the CPM is lower because the, you know, that's something they're pushing or maybe, Yeah.

Is it be, or is it because the audience is bigger? Yeah, the bigger audience. A lot of times you, CP. I, I, you know, I agree with you to, to a point that yeah, we don't, if that is something they're just pushing and that the prices are gonna just get worse, then, then yeah. That's probably then it's not gonna be as useful down the road potentially.

Or the algorithm would, will get better because they just needed more people to use it. Yeah. Right. Yeah, it's always theory and a guess with Facebook, cuz Oh, it is . They never actually tell us what's going on. Cool. So one question I have for you, and like I know we chat, well, you answered my question about this on TikTok, like how do you see the Facebook or Meta ad platform being for smaller advertisers over the coming years?

I mean, we've seen certainly. It's got harder for smaller advertisers because maybe partly just because ad costs have risen, so the number of data points that they can afford to buy at their price point is lower, maybe because of iOS 14. So the data has been cut off. So the ability to get the amount of data that Facebook meta needs to optimize is, is harder at a small budget.

But I'd just be interested to hear your point of view on small advertisers and, and where the platform might end up being useful for them or. Yeah, I mean, small, small advertisers, it could depend on, you know, what it is you do, right? What, what is the industry? Some industries are absolutely easier, like if you're in any type of entertainment industry, I honestly think a lot of the retail stuff is, is probably good as well.

Yeah. I tend to think my advice is, yeah, start, If you've got a very low budget, then start with retargeting because, and you know, more audiences because then at least you're gonna augment your conversion rate and maybe get some more cash injected into the business. Because whether they found you through, if they didn't find you through Facebook or Insta Graham, doesn't mean they're not on there.

And you can still stay top of mind after they buy, after they show an interest. But yeah, I think for, so for e-com specifically, if that have a low budget and are just getting started, my advice is always like, save your budget for as long as you can, and then give it a good, strong push. Yeah. Don't drip it out at like two or $3 a day.

Right. And expect to get results. Rather save it up, do a, you know, a couple of months of really good testing with, you know, at least a few thousand dollars a month. Get some data and see if Facebook can find your audience. And then you can scale from there. But yeah, it is tricky. It's not the place it was five years ago, I think, for just getting started.

No, I mean, it was, it was, it was exciting and fun, like the kind of things you could do for nothing. I mean, I, I still remember some of the experiments I ran. They were just amazed me when I was able to do it. Like the amount of impact you. Spending a few dollars but that's just not possible anymore. I mean, starting with the CPMs, like you just, it just costs a lot more to reach people, even if it's a smaller group.

Yeah. Yeah. And that is the main challenge, isn't it? Cause the algorithms got smarter. It's not that the algorithm. Yeah. Well, I guess it got smarter and then it got a bit less smart with iOS 14. Mm-hmm. . But generally, I think the problem is that the algorithms smartness is not keeping pace with the cp.

Growth. Here's the crazy thing, and this Facebook or meta whatever, in a roundabout way said this but it's also backed up in some other studies I've seen in their la their third quarter report, their ad revenue. Not just ad revenue, but I think ad. Or revenue per impression, I think is down. I, I interpret that to mean cpm ah, yeah.

Can be wrong. But they never really use cpm. It's down like 18%. But there, there's, there's this other It's a website called, Yeah, there's other website called Within within Marketing Pulse that it's just like, I think they're clients and whatnot, but that's another resource I use to kind of map CPMs and where they're at.

Yeah. Tends to show that CPMs are down. So I do think there's this overarching belief that CPMs are up. I don't know if they necessarily are, but I think it's because performance is down. So it's like we're not benefiting from. A lower cpm. Right. But anyway, I mean, CPM should, I think the big key will be this next period of time here where CPMs usually could double, triple, you know, during the holidays.

Is that gonna happen this year? Yeah, that could be better. Be super interesting. Yeah, because there's, you know, every advertiser that's serious is now in TikTok as well, so they're not gonna be just cranking everything all on meta like they might have done last year or the year. Which brings me nicely to TikTok

So you've been experimenting a little bit with TikTok Organic and TikTok ads as well, if I'm not mistaken. Yeah. What are your, what are your thoughts on the platform and what was behind your decision to kind of go and give it a, give it a good try? First of all, it's just kind of funny. I mean, two months ago, if you had told me that, that's something I would do, I'd laugh at you

I was largely like mock. TikTok just, I didn't understand it, I didn't use it. But the reality is this a lot of things have happened for my business over the, this is one of those kind of unique challenges you run into as well, like when you've been around for a long time. So like, my business has been around a long, long time.

Like for the first five, six years, I was con like everything was changing. So, Trying to figure out, you know, what software to use and how to do all these things and then just try to streamline it as much as possible to, to, to do things one particular way to save time and ultimately spend more time with my family.

And yeah, so that all happened. And then so I, I was, I was, That also makes, makes you resistant to change. It's like, this is the way I've always done things. Keep doing it that way. And Facebook is always pushing you, Oh, we gotta do video, gotta do video. I'm like, Ah, not gonna do video. And I have a lot of personal reasons.

I don't like video anyway. I just don't like being in front of the camera for the most part. And just all the backstage stuff. And then, you know, I think honestly the combination of C and iOS. Accelerated any underlying issues I was having with my business. My, my stubbornness, my reluctance to change, it just accelerated everything.

So really this past summer, it just became a make or break. I gotta do something because this thing ain't working anymore. The way I'm doing it is not working. Yeah. And. Timed perfectly. Cuz many of the things I did with my business in the past was like, I've got three boys and like I I, and I spend so much time with them and I'm a baseball coach and all these kind of things.

Like I'm just trying to. Make my business work well enough so that I have freedom to do all these things with them. Well, two, my, my two oldest boys are in college now. My youngest is now in high school, which also means I'm no longer a baseball coach. Yeah. So it's like, okay, now it's time to sit down and figure out what the hell I'm doing.

And you know, one of the first things I did was like, I've gotta, I've gotta figure out short form video because whether it's TikTok or it's Facebook or Instagram I'm not doing those things. Just sharing links to my blog post and whatnot isn't really doing it anymore. I've gotta do something different and, And it was pretty amazing.

So first of all, organically, and I, I stress this to anybody who's like really uncomfortable about doing this stuff and feel like I just don't know what I'm doing. I absolutely did not know what I'm doing. But you have to do things that you don't understand Yeah. In order to learn. Right. So that's kind of what made, like, once I embrace that, like I, I'm gonna create some really bad video.

You know, in the beginning, and I'll look back at 'em and cringe and whatnot. They're not bad, by the way. There are a couple of 'em, . Yeah, same. But I have to say your, that exact, you did a video ont, where you said that, that I'm gonna, you know, embrace doing that. That one was terrible. That one was really bad too.

but, but it's, Well, it inspired me, right? So the content was great because it inspired me and reminded me. The same thing. Like, I'm not gonna be a TikTok star in one minute. I'm gonna Yeah. Play around and I'm gonna get some data, I'm gonna get some feedback, and I'm gonna see what works. So, Yep. Yeah. Right.

So, you know, I had to overcome some fears. But it's just like the, the doubt, the self-doubt. It's like, I don't know how to do this. I don't, I don't like, even like, oh, just create a video through the TikTok app and edit it through there. Like, I don't, like, there's so many options. Like, I don't know what I'm doing.

Yeah. Part of it is like consuming it, seeing what other people do, follow the right people who explain how to do things. Yeah. To kinda give you tips on stuff, but it's, it's really more that like, you know, each video is an attempt. It's like to improve on the last one you did. But, so it had a lot of value though for me.

Wasn't just, Okay, I want to create this huge TikTok presence, which I, I still see an opportunity to do and I think I. It's that, well, luckily that same format I can use on Facebook reels and Instagram reels and on, on YouTube shorts now. And it's not like, initially what I was doing was like just taking the T version with the T watermark.

Now I've got the version that since I do all my editing, Not on the TikTok app. Yeah, I just take that initial version and, and push them to all different places and use different music and stuff. I even push to LinkedIn and so I think beyond just feeling more comfortable with TikTok and feeling like, Oh man, I think I can grow something here.

It's taking advantage of that knowledge with that format.

And so, but it's just that, So this is I'm about a month and a half into this experiment right now. And yeah, so by no means have it all figured out, but I have more of a system starting to have like more direction on what I'm doing and why I'm doing it. And so, but I'm also using, like you said, like TikTok ads too.

And the crazy thing about TikTok ads. Yeah, I was like, I never would've envisioned getting into this, but the first time I opened up TikTok Ads Manager and like, Oh my God, this is exactly like this. I'm Ads manager. Right. So it's like, and, and it's really kind of a, a scale down version too. So, Which makes sense because TikTok ads is newer.

And Facebook over the years, just keep adding feature on top of feature and they don't all this fit together. And, but, so I was immediately comfortable and like, well I can do this, you know? Yeah. But also tried to go in with the beginner's mind and like, because this didn't work on Facebook, I didn't want to assume it wouldn't work on TikTok and, you know, that kind of thing.

Yeah. So it's been a, a fun experience. I mean, the stuff I've learned there so far, I can't talk at all about monetizing or, you know, running conversion ads or even running lead ads. I haven't done any of that yet. I still just start at the beginning, like, I wanna build my audience, which is a challenge.

Well challenge doing it again. Quality TikTok has the same issue. Like you tell TikTok. Target broad. Give me a whole bunch of followers. They'll get you a whole bunch of followers. But you start looking at me following, you're like, What the hell is this? ? So it's that. It's, And even getting engagement, like getting people to watch your videos and it's like, there's gotta be like, again, there's gotta be another layer in there of really high, like, I wanna optimize for people who watch the entire thing.

Can we do that? You know? But anyway, so I'm still in the early stages of that. So like people ask me like, Oh, so what's your return on ad spend with TikTok ads? I'm like, It's negative 5,000, whatever. Cause I haven't, I haven't done anything like to try to make money with it. Yeah. But I, I kind of compare it to the early days of my business when all I did was just create content.

Yeah. That eventually paid off. And like, I'm hoping it works out the same way. It's like there is something to like people who are only on a platform to sell. That it's gotta hurt their, their reach, their engagement, their following, their growth. Right. So I'm trying to, in the early going only focus on providing value and then eventually just, you know, work in some sales and stuff, but not be like, yeah, overbearing.

Like it's, it's tough. It's like TikTok it, I mean, there's not a lot of selling there, you know? Yeah. Yeah. That's true. So would you see yourself in the, because. Your business, you know, grew from your blog and your incredibly detailed, meticulous content that people could really rely on to get the information they needed.

Do you see yourself pivoting like to mostly video first content, or would you still do the blogging or, Yeah, it's tough to say, you know, it's the question I've been asking. And I also have a podcast. And just trying to see like, you know, where all this fits. And obviously I'm, I'm one person and I can't do everything.

Like yeah, that's what, that's what happens. Like as soon as I started being invested in all a short form video, I was no longer podcasting as much. I was no longer writing as many blog posts and like, I just, That's tough finding that balance. But yeah, the blog was, The blog was my business and. That said, like, I just published a new blog post this morning, or last night and sent out an email, and I'm, you know, I still get traffic to that.

So, yeah. You know, I don't want to abandon that at this point. But I absolutely realize that people are consuming content in different ways. And it, you know, not necessarily want. Or not everybody wants, for example, that detailed blog post tutorial, right? Sometimes people want that description in a video.

Yeah. And also sometimes they want it in a short video. And so like even the way I would've done it a few years ago with a video, I probably would've taken 10 minutes to explain something. Whereas the nice thing about short form videos, like you, you're forced to like edit this down and Yeah, yeah, yeah.

What do you use for editing, by the way, You mentioned you use one edit in one place and then push it out. Yeah, so this is just really just a, and people ask me a lot like what I use and what they should use. It's, there's so many different things you can use. Just use what you're, what you're comfortable with.

Yeah. If it works. Cuz I use screen flow. I've used screen flow for over a decade. For everything really. Things it's not even intended for. Like that's, that's how, where I record my, my podcast even. Yeah. I do every, everything through there and it's, I, I find it really easy to edit stuff out, really easy to like do little video not so much animations, but like, like zooming in, zooming out and like, yeah, like if I'm doing a screen share, you know, moving things around and things.

You know what like, so all that's really easy for me cuz I. For 10 years. Yeah. So yeah, I do most of it in there. Then I move it to cap cut. Like initially I tried to edit and cap cut. It makes my head hurt a little bit. So, but I use cap cut for the, the captioning, the close captioning stuff, right?

Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. And then you put the music on when you put it on the platform. Yes. So I've gone back and forth on that, but yes, so, so actually the, the ones that I think I've even put out today so when it goes to TikTok, I've got a bunch of favorited tracks that I use, and then on Facebook and Instagram, the originally, So the thing you have to be careful about, especially if you use it for business purposes, you need to use music that's cleared.

And I did hear, and I don't know if this is true, that like if you do some of your editing in app, you'll get favored by the algorithm.

So like if you use the filter, use the text. Yeah, I don't know. Hey, I, I've heard it. All I'll say is this, We were told the same kind of thing with Facebook and organic reach. Like you, you don't ever don't use a third party tool to publish and to schedule your post. And that was just widely believed as being 100% factual.

And I know it was debunked by a few people. I, unless it's absolutely proven. I'm gonna be skeptical, like, like I can understand to a point, like if you're adding some of the text in the app, right? So like you know, when it comes up there and it's got like, you know what this is about and it shows in text if you're doing that in the app instead of on your computer, like may, you know, they probably read that better.

Yeah. And that could help with that. So maybe for sto Yeah. But at the same time, I find what I'm able to do away from the app is just way more powerful and just more efficient than trying to do it all. Like I'm in my, in my hand, like I just, that's just too much for me to like try to do all that stuff. I know.

Right, And to do it like times four platforms. No. Yeah, exactly. It's not worth it. Yeah. That's where you have to pick your battles, right? Yeah. Do you find sometimes the content will do really well on one platform versus another, and it's kind of surprising it doesn't always go in the same direction. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, see it Brent, I like, there's one that like YouTube shorts. I, I really haven't gotten traction on it and all of a sudden I had one that did really well and I have no idea why it's not like it did very well on the other one. On the other, Yeah. Or any, like, particularly well on the other platforms.

But I, it is interesting because I, I actually just saw a video from someone. The day is like, oh, you know, once you've got one does really well on YouTube, use that and push that to Facebook. But I don't, I don't see the same impact in, in all places. It's just, I find it to be honestly pretty random. Yeah.

And I don't know if it's the content, if it's the, you know how it is, it's the time of day, the day of the week, Like all those things contribute, or the copy I wrote with it or what? Yeah. I mean, is it just that they're showing it to a small group of people and if you had some people that just really responded well in that first group and then fa, you know, the platform then just decides, Hey, this is quite good.

We're gonna push it out more. and then it kind of just catches on. That's all I can think of, like, cuz I know that's how it works with ads on Facebook, Right? And it shows it to a small amount of people and then decides from there like whether this is gonna be a winner or not. Yeah. I, I think it's just one of those things that we overthink.

And like, what, what, what I think we should avoid doing is like, Oh, it always works this way. Like, yeah, because, because this one worked really well. I've gotta do all of my videos like that. Yeah. You know? Or like when people talk about the best day of the week, best time of day, like all that stuff, I, especially if you've got a universal audience, you're getting a drive yourself Crazy.

Trying to figure that out. I, I don't think they're gonna figure it out and. I think just for the most part, you know, find something that works and like, you know, I'm publishing two videos a day and I, for the most part, I'll wake up and publish one and then early afternoon I'll publish another one and try not to overthink it beyond that.

But yeah. And are you batch recording generally? Well, the best I can like these are still. It's, it's better than it was at first for me, but I'd say for the most part, you know, these one minute videos are one hour to, to record and edit and everything. So I've gotta have the time to do that. Yeah. And so generally I'll be able to record three or four in a day.

Yeah. That's about as close as I can get to a batch. It's tough to keep up cuz if I'm publishing two a day yeah. You know, I gotta watch out. But weekends I'm, I think this last week I just finally decided I'm just gonna go one per day on the weekend. Yeah. Go from there. But yeah. Awesome. Cool. Well, what final question for you, what are you excited about?

For our industry, honestly, it's like, it's just all changing the way. It's a little scary right now Facebook, and probably for meta generally. It's probably a little scary for Twitter right now. Like anyone who's advertising there, like what, what they're gonna do. Like, so for me it's exciting, like trying new things and I feel like I'm kind of forced to, but we don't, we also don't know the future of TikTok.

Like for all we know, TikTok could be, could be banned in the US that there's always been talk of that potentially happening. Yeah. So honestly, it's like, I, I think where we're headed right now is obviously more video, short form video. But yeah, I think the clear thing is more automation, which I know scares advertisers.

Mm-hmm. and marketers generally, cuz I think it's, it's gonna replace them, but I think it'll, I really think it'll be the opposite. I think it's gonna be, You still have to know which levers to pull for each situation and to make it work for you. But the smarter it gets, the better. I mean, I think, you know, Facebook absolutely has to come up with more and more features.

And we've, we've even talked about some of 'em. I think they need that. I wouldn't be surprised that they create, you know, But whether it's attribution or increased improving their modeling, like they know. They have to provide better results cuz they're, they're not doing as well revenue right now.

Yeah. So they've got that, their advertisers are pretty important. Yeah. So I don't like to predict the future so much. I'm not very good at it , but I, I, I think some of the automation and whatnot I think could go some pretty exciting places for us. Yeah. Yeah. And it, everything, every time something changes, they become, they just, it just creates a new battleground between.

The advertisers that are competing for the, the customer's dollar in the end, right? So, mm-hmm. , We've always gotta find a way to differentiate in some way, whether it's through high tech media buying and super complicated setups, like maybe it used to be, now it's maybe more through creative or what happens after the click, or how we actually position our offer, or there's always gonna be stuff for us to do, to stand out.

It's not like we're all, every advertiser's just gonna type. I want customers. And then Faith's just gonna give you customers like that gonna be, Yeah. Well, and think about that. It's like, well, let's say that it got so good that anyone could create an ad and you just trust the algorithm and it would work.

Well, then everyone would advertise. Yeah. It would all balance. It would all balance out. Right. So everybody starts spending a whole bunch more money on advertising cause it's all gonna work. Yeah. Well the CPMs are gonna go up. Yeah. And it's gonna be, it's gonna end up getting really crowded and everything is going to work.

So you've gotta work better than the other guy who's your other lady's doing it. And so there's always gonna be, you've gotta differentiate yourself even if like the, the tools make it. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Interesting. Anything else you wanna add or share with the audience? Not so much. I mean, I'd say, you know, if, if you're needing help on Facebook ads or either even TikTok ads these days find me on Jon luer.com, but also at Jon Luer, just about everywhere.

I mean, Facebook is facebook.com/jonloomerdigital, but at Jon Loomer on TikTok and Instagram. Cool. We will link you in the show notes to all of your your social channels. And it's Jon with no H, right? J o n? No H No h But yeah, we'll make sure that the show notes, have all those links so people can follow your awesome TikTok journey and see how you continue to grow.

Awesome. Awesome. Thanks for coming along. Right. Thanks so much, Jessie. No worries.