Hello,

This week, we share thoughts on Google and Meta’s AI ad campaigns and highlight 3 trending designs for some ad creative inspiration.

Are there topics you’re interested in getting more info? Send a reply to let us know.

Up and to the right,

Luke & The Astronaut Party Team

Algorithmically Driven Ad Campaigns - What Are They, And How Can We Benefit From Them?

By Beth Teutschmann

Historically, advertisers had a lot of control when setting up ad campaigns, whether on Google or Facebook. You had control over the campaign objective, the audience, the ad copy, the ad creative, where the ads showed up, how the budget was allocated, the keywords that triggered your ads, everything really. 

However, as machine learning and AI have improved over the years, both Google and Facebook have leaned into a simplified approach that allows the platform to make some of those decisions for you. 

Enter: Google’s PMAX (Performance Max Campaigns) and Facebook’s ASC (Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns) campaigns. 

What are PMAX and ASC Campaigns?

PMAX (from Google) and ASC (from Facebook) are campaign types that rely heavily on AI and machine learning to show your ads to a relevant audience. 

Facebook or Google determine who that “relevant audience” is based on Audience Signals - usually a combination of past customer lists (in the case of Facebook) and affinity or in-market audiences (in the case of Google) as well as who the platforms see engaging with your ads. 

No need to spend time crafting the perfect audience with carefully selected exclusions. You just tell the system who your past customers were and these campaigns go out and try to find more customers like your past customers. 

With increasing privacy policy crackdowns (GDPR, Apple iOS 14, etc.) that limit third-party data, AI campaigns like this are becoming increasingly important. 

The Pro’s & Con’s of These AI Campaigns

PROS: There are really only two pros to these campaigns:

1. Admittedly, they require less strategy to set up.

2. Sometimes, they can be pretty good at finding new customers and offering good overall performance. And they are getting better all the time.

CONS: From an experienced marketing point of view, they do offer some challenges:

1. They require us to trust and believe in platforms that want us to spend rather than be efficient. Our incentives are slightly misaligned.

2. Part of giving the ad networks more control means we don’t get nearly as many insights into where our ads are performing and what we can do to optimize them further.

3. The downside is that many times, the ads aren’t shown to new customers. This is especially true for PMAX campaigns. Their primary goal is driving revenue efficiently, and the best way to do that is to show ads to warm/retargeting audiences.

4. As a result of the above, they are difficult for marketers that want to control spend at each stage of the funnel.

In summary, while they can perform, they are also opaque, which can be troublesome.

Ways Around the Challenges

There are ways around some of these downsides.

To ensure new customer acquisition, each platform does give us some dials we can tweak:

• PMAX: You can theoretically tell PMAX campaigns to target new customers when setting them up, but in our experience, this is not as effective as excluding past customers. If you want PMAX campaigns to target new customers, you have to increase the budget, forcing PMAX to deliver more impressions to more expensive prospects (which are usually your TOF first-time purchasers). 

• ASC: Meta’s ASC has a similar feature that allows you to cap the allocated budget spend for returning customers. All you have to do is set the percentage to 0%, and in theory, ASC will only deliver ads to new customers. However, this feature seems to be being phased out. As of the time this article is being written, some of our accounts no longer have that feature. We assume that if this feature is fully removed, ASC campaigns will be similar to PMAX campaigns, such that if you want to use it to acquire new customers, you’re going to have to increase the budget. 

To report and understand the stages of the funnels, we can estimate where they are spending based on the percentage of new visitors to the site from our multi-touch attribution platforms.

And well, for trust, we hope it is in Google and Facebook’s long-term best interest to provide us with campaigns that perform.

The Biggest Takeaway

Regardless of how we feel about AI and simplified ad campaigns, one thing’s for sure—they’re here to stay, and we’re constantly improving our strategy for including them in our client’s portfolios. 

Creative Spotlight: 3 Trending Designs in Ads

By Loren Duzett

This week’s theme: nostalgia and being bold.

1. Vintage Film Shot + Serif

We’ve seen attempts to revive trends from the past, and one trend that has been revived, especially in high-end brands, is the very nostalgic film footage visual. Using super 8 shots or photos captured through a film camera evokes a sense of cinematic history and is eye-catching to art enthusiasts. Serif font and thin-lined shapes are commonly used with this design direction.

2. 3D Text

This design trend embraces the funky and bold nature of 3D art. When applied to text, a 3D design can stop the scroll with the illusion of something popping from a flat screen. It’s a playful and fun way to share a message, and a brand using this design can evoke child-like joy. For a classy variation of 3D text, some brands use 3D serif font with metallic textures for a sleeker look.

3. 70’s Retro Nostalgia

Another design dipping into the river of nostalgia is 70s retro. Popular colors from the 70s make a comeback, with the color shades often leaning towards a flatter intensity rather than bright primary pops. Here, we see olive greens, rust oranges, and mellow yellows, my favorite choices. Illustrated cartoons also make an appearance, along with simple patterns, in this design, inviting customers into a groovy past.

Song of the Week

🎵 Espresso by Sabrina Carpenter

It’s only June, but we are betting this will become a top song on our Spotify Wrapped playlists. ☕️