Meta first ever Performance marketing summit Sep 2022

I recently attended the Meta first-ever Performance marketing summit in Sep 2022. On the event page, you can find many on-demand videos, so feel free to take a look. Below is my take about the event

1. Meta and Google are selling a very similar narrative to the market

The way Meta is selling their Performance marketing solution is remarkably similar to Google. The 3 key pillars are machine learning (via account simplification), better creatives (especially diversity in both concepts and formats), and business growth validation (via incrementality-based measurement using MMM).

2. Meta team tried their best to cater the content to this particular audience

The majority of the content is about performance marketing, which is good. And they did a good job of making the information actionable for the audience too. For example, “Performance 5“:

• Account simplification: this is to give the machine the most amount of data possible and allows it to optimize at scale in real time. The first 1 – 2 weeks of a new campaign is the learning phase, so allocate a maximum of 20% of your budget in this phase to ensure that the overall performance is meeting expectations.
• Creators for DR: It is true that the creator economy is booming globally. And so, working with creators should be part of the performance marketing mix.
• Creativediversification: Having more diverse creative concepts and formats works on Meta.
  • Short-form video: as more and more people interact/consume short-form videos globally, how can short-form video play a role in performance marketing?
    • It is likely that you will need a more advanced measurement solution to evaluate the impact of short-form video activities.
• Conversion API quality check: this is to ensure that outcome signals being sent back to Meta are of good quality.
• Business result validation: test account-wide conversion API-based lift studies on a quarterly basis.

3. Business result validation (aka incrementality) is heavily emphasized

This type of emphasis will go well with the CFOs, especially in this macro environment in the US, Europe, and even Asia. Basically, the question is about the incremental impact of performance marketing spend on revenue that would not have happened.

Meta recommends incrementality-based measurement via marketing mix modeling (MMM).

As someone who has real-life experience in designing and implementing incrementality measurement, I can share that while this advice is simple to give but very difficult to execute in real life. For example:

• Who do you try to solve this question for?
  • If you try to solve for the global CFO, then you care about what the total marketing spend brings incrementally.
  • But if you try to solve for the regional performance marketing director, the measurement plan is very different.

• Incrementality-based goal: if the rest of the marketing activities are not judged based on incrementality, then how do you compare your incrementality-based performance vs the rest? What does good look like?
• How do you aggregate results from the country level to the regional level or global level?
• etc…

Meta, together with Deloitte, recommends a Measurement 360 framework, which you can read more about here.

4. This is a packed event

I have to admit, this is my first packed event in more than 2 years. It is good to see that people want to go to real life event and interact with others 🙂

The summit schedule is good too. They didn’t have smaller breaks in between sessions but had long lunchtime and ended early for happy hours.

5. Metaverse seems like a “forced” session

The biggest area for improvement is probably the metaverse session at the end of the summit. I know it’s Meta so they “have to” talk about the metaverse. But it seems so “forced”. I don’t think the organizers wanted to talk about the metaverse either (:D) but they had to include it because of the “higher ups”.

I don’t find the content of this session interesting or relevant or new so I tuned out and did some other work. Not sure if others felt the same way?

6. Reels was heavily promoted

While Reels was heavily promoted at the event, I find it interesting that Meta didn’t mention any stats about Instagram Reels’ usage (DAU and time spent) in major markets. We know that Reels is competing with Tiktok and other short-form video platforms. So the fact that there was no mention of Reels’ usage suggests to me that it is lagging Tiktok.

Last but not least, Meta recently announced their Q3 2022 earnings, and they did mention some specific numbers about Reels during the earning call:

• “There are now more than 140 billion Reels plays across Facebook and Instagram each day. That’s a 50% increase from six months ago. Reels is incremental to time spent on our apps. The trends look good here, and we believe that we’re gaining time spent share on competitors like TikTok.“

I included my thoughts on Meta’s Q3 2022 financial results and future revenue opportunities.

That’s all from me. Let me know what you think?

Chandler