Don’t Unlike FBX Just Yet

It’s no secret that changes are coming to Facebook’s Ad Exchange (FBX). We have all seen articles arise in the last few weeks about various partners being dropped from the approved Facebook list and Facebook decreasing their investment in the FBX product. While this has possibly changed who you are buying this inventory through, for the time being FBX is still an effective tactic to reach your user base and increase scale within your campaigns.

I thought I would share some best practices I have found when running FBX campaigns:

Tired of seeing the same ad

Much like running other social campaigns, creative in FBX goes stale very quickly. With the effective CPM nature, FBX campaigns serve a large number of impressions and you don’t want to be hitting users with the same creative over and over. It is recommended to rotate at least 2-3 different images within a campaign at one time. These creatives should then be switched out every 2-3 weeks.

Not just for retargeting

While most FBX campaigns are targeted to only hit users who have been to an advertiser’s website, many DSPs have the ability to utilize other data sources. Some of these sources are 3rd party audience lists, data pixels based on 1st party data or other demographic information. These can be utilized to find users based on certain behaviors for more upper funnel goals.

Adjust creative by placement

Although the creative specs are very similar for both the right hand rail and newsfeed placements, it is always a good idea to make adjustments within the creative for each. For example, newsfeed allows more characters and copy within the unit, but since this is a more native placement, tailoring the imagery and text to more lifestyle and conversational usually results in better performance. The right hand rail should be more focused on product and CTA messaging.

It’s dynamic!

One offering within FBX is the use of dynamic creative. This is a great tactic for more transactional driven campaigns with access to a product feed. Just like open exchange dynamic, it encourages stronger engagement with the user and pulls through product relevant to their specific behavior. Despite FBX proving strong performance, we have seen dynamic programs perform even better.