In a previous article about Dynamic Creatives, I was preaching that they are a “game changer”, forever transforming ads as we know them. A sort of Zuckerberg’s gift for us, humble Facebook advertisers. Maybe I wasn’t using these exact words, but still, I was clearly a big fan. After running a few test campings, I must admit that I was a bit over-optimistic.
My ads using dynamic creatives prove to be about 44% MORE expensive than the ones using the old, “classical” format. And yet, by using dynamic creatives I was able to IMPROVE my acquisition cost by about 20%.
So I’m still a fan, sort of…
I paid 44% more and ended up paying 20% less
You probably wonder if I write this under the influence of a powerful narcotic since it clearly bears no logic. How is even possible to pay less if you pay more! I will explain it all.
With Dynamic Creatives, you can test multiple components of an ad at once. You can configure a single ad to run with up to 5 headlines, texts, descriptions, CTAs, and up to 10 images. Facebook will create combinations of them, supposedly picking up the best of everything. In theory, you have the full power of their algorithm working to increase your conversion and improve your ROI. As it turns out, in practice is a different story.
What Dynamic Creatives are doing is to deploy Artificial Intelligence and let it figure it out how the “perfect” ad should look like. It’s a promising approach, but one that probably needs a bit more work to deliver the best results.
The numbers
Targeting exactly the same audience the results of the “default” campaign and the Dynamic Creatives campaign are as follow:
Not using Dynamic Creatives: I’ve spent $972.17, generating 326 registrations, with $2.98 CPA.
Using Dynamic Creatives: I’ve spent $934.11, generating 233 registrations, with $4.01 CPA.
I suspect that with a bigger budget, Dynamic Creatives can deliver better results. Interestingly enough, it doesn’t look like the results were improved with time, acquisition cost staying more or less similar from start to end. That’s something I wasn’t expecting to see.
Other campaigns I have delivered similar performances, so I believe this example is relevant.
Then what?
Fortunately, I didn’t stop there. Inside Ads Reports, you can see the performance of each Dynamic Creative asset. Go to “Breakdown”, and click on “BY DYNAMIC CREATIVE ASSET”:
I’ve simply copied the best performing text, headline, description and CTA into a text document and I’ve used them to create a new “classic” ad. Note that you’ll have to edit the ad in order to copy anything.
I’ve also used the best 5 performing images.
The NEW numbers
I’m happy to report that this new ad is performing better than the Dynamic Reports ad, but also better than the old “classic” ad. Its current CPA sits somewhere around $2.3. It’s still too early for a final conclusion, but I would say that this is an interesting result.
Happy experimenting!
