Ever since the early days of Facebook advertising, we’ve been pushing the importance of creative testing.
ALWAYS be testing.
Without testing, how do you know which image will resonate best with your audience? Do you go with short or long copy? Emojis or no emojis?
We typically recommend testing at least 4-5 images and a few different copy variations in every ad set you launch.
Minimum.
The trouble is, without 3rd party software to help facilitate setting this up, it can get very time consuming to do properly.
Even if you only test 4 images, 3 title variations, and 3 text variations, that’s still 36 ads!
36 ads that you need to create one by one.
Then once you have those 36 ads, you need to have budgets large enough to give spend to all of those ads and get data on what performs and what doesn’t.
This is why we’re so excited about the new Facebook Dynamic Creative.
What is Facebook Dynamic Creative?
Facebook Dynamic Creative is a new ad type from Facebook that allows advertisers to upload multiple variations of each field in the ad and have Facebook automatically split test the variations across your audiences.
What can you test?
With Dynamic Creative, you can test the following in a single ad:
- Up to 10 images/videos
- 5 body text variations
- 5 title text variations
- 5 descriptions
- 5 Call To Action (CTA) button variations
What are the limitations?
Right now Dynamic Creative ads are limited to the following:
- Ad Types: single image or single video
- Campaign Objectives: link clicks, website conversions, app conversions, and app installs
- Placements: Facebook desktop newsfeed, Facebook mobile newsfeed, Instagram stream, Audience Network, Messenger
What is so great about it?
There are three primary features that set Dynamic Creative apart from traditional split testing using multiple distinct ads:
- Automation – first and foremost, we love Dynamic Creative because it makes the process of split testing SO much easier and faster. And with all things, the easier it is the more likely we are to actually use it and benefit from it.
- Social Engagement – if you have 36 ads you’re testing, all the likes, comments, and shares on those ads are split across the 36 variations. With dynamic creative, you only have one ad and all of those social engagements are consolidated into the primary media (image or video). So if you are testing 4 images, 3 titles, and 3 text variations, you’ll have all the social engagement aggregated among 4 ads instead of being spread across 36 ads.
- Dynamic Optimization – not only is Facebook serving the best-performing variations of your ad in general, they’re customizing it for each individual impression. So if one prospect has a propensity to like black shoes, they’ll see a version of your ad that’s different from someone who prefers brown shoes.
How do you set it up?
It’s relatively easy to set up these ads in the new Ads Manager, here’s how to do it:
- First you’ll need to create a new ad set using the Quick Creation flow and select the option for Dynamic Creative. Note that Dynamic Creative ads need to live in their own ad set and can only have one ad per ad set.
- From there, create a new ad and you’ll see Add buttons next to each of the dynamic fields. Simply enter your variations, click add, and go crazy 🙂
Reporting and Best Practices
- To view reports on the performance of each variation, go into ads manager, navigate to the ad level of the Dynamic Creative you’re running, click the Breakdown dropdown, and select “By Dynamic Creative Asset.” From there you’ll see options for all the different elements like Image, Title, Text, etc.
- Tip – use different images. This may seem obvious, but try not to use images that are similar to each other. You want to test images that are vastly different – think lifestyle images vs product images. Professional shots with text vs unedited iPhone images.
- Tip – use different types of copy. Same as above, rather than testing multiple variations of similar copy, try vastly different versions. Maybe one long-form copy vs one short copy. One with emojis and one without. You get the idea.
- Tip – use large, relatively broad audiences. Because Facebook is testing your ads across multiple different types of people, the larger the user base they have to deliver it to, the better your ad should perform. Just make sure to not go too broad at the expense of relevancy.
All in all, we’re very excited about Dynamic Creatives in Facebook and Instagram. We’ve been seeing impressive results in the tests we’ve been running for our clients and have started incorporating into more and more accounts over the past few weeks. Have you tried them out yet? Feel free to comment below or send us an email if you have any questions about setting up these ads. We’re always happy to help!