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- [00:00]
A
So, like, I've. I've always had like two or three or four ads, like carrying the weight of the account, but this is normal, right? Welcome back to Brain Driven Brands. Happy Friday. This won't get posted on Friday, but we're recording on Fridays, so we're in a good for y'.
- [00:17]
B
All.
- [00:17]
A
How are you doing, Sarah?
- [00:18]
B
Great. So great. This has been one of those weeks where I'm like, I've got a lot done. I. I like, really put some effort into being productive this week and actually like, stay on task with things. So sometimes I'll take like a random afternoon off. And that was a couple days ago I stopped working. I mean, granted, it was like four when I stopped working, but for Sarah, that.
- [00:39]
A
That's a lot better than six guys. Right.
- [00:42]
B
I got a full hour of just chilling. Kids are out of school, which is, you know, now the real work starts. So we're headed to Florida pretty soon. So it just takes. It's been good. Weird segue, but I ran a couple polls this week to try and figure out how many people are actually seeing more than maybe like two to three ads as like full time winners in the ad account. Because I had this question coming from my school group where everybody was like, is this happening? Because I only have maybe like three or four that are at the top. We can't get anybody to like win outside of those three or four anytime. So I want to see what you think because then I could tell you what the poll said.
- [01:20]
A
Yeah. So, like, I've. I've always had like two or three or four ads, like carrying the weight of the account, but it's just normal, right? Yeah, but we, we've been in cycles of like, we can beat them eventually, but. And then that just becomes like one of the new three and that, that other one kind of falls off. But, like, I feel like every account I've ever run or been in has had two to four ads that make up like 70% of account spend. And if performance is good, then great, they're doing their job. If not, like, then we kill them and try really hard to beat them.
- [01:55]
B
Yeah, well, okay, so then I ran a poll about this on Twitter and I just said, like, on average, how many ads are typically winning or holding up your ad account? And it was. It seems to be split. So we've got like. And again, there's not that many votes on this. So take it with a grain of salt because nobody voted on Twitter. They did on LinkedIn though. And I'll show you the differences between the two on Twitter, it's like a 30, 30, 30. Like 30, 30, 32 to 3 ads, 3 to 5 ads, 5 to 10 ads is some. Is what people are saying Interesting. On LinkedIn, it was very different. So let me go pull up this post. On LinkedIn. There was 113 votes, and 44% of the people on here said 2 to 3 ads are holding up the entire account. 32% says 3 to 5, and then 18% says 5 to 10. Only 4% of the people that answered this survey said they have 10 plus ads holding up the account. So the majority of us, yeah, are somewhere between 2 and 5. Now, the reason this came up and how this kind of links back to, like, consumer favor things. I had a good friend of mine who's running a bunch of like, random tests for me and is that account where I'm like, just run this weird test, like, is it me? It's. Well, you are part of the.
- [03:00]
A
Okay.
- [03:01]
B
But Connor is part of the other test. So Connor, lovely friend, owns a couple brands. He's gonna go run all these tests for me. And I asked him, why is it that statistically speaking, we have two to five ads holding up the account, but there's a large portion of us that are just like dumping volume in here. If you think about the math, shouldn't that rise equally? Like, if you dump more ads, shouldn't there be more winners holding up the account? Like, because of bell curves and shit? Yeah, but it's not happening. So, like, why is that a thing? So then I went down this deep, dark rabble of trying to figure out why this is happening. That's why I'm asking you. Because I'm like.
- [03:38]
A
I mean, I think it. I think it partially. I think it partially depends on, like, how are we defining a winner? Okay, so, like, let me start there. When I say, like, there always been, you know, three or four ads that like, take the bulk of the spend and are my winners. The next 20 ads, if I. If they're on means, like, performance is good on them. They're just not spending a lot. So there's been times where like, okay, I think about, like, Q4 is at OG. We'd have, you know, a campaign that's spending 100 grand a day. Like, absolutely humming. One ad would spend 60 grand, the next ad would spend 20, and then we'd have a bunch that are spending like a few grand a day each. But, like, all of them were performing well and, like, some of them were selling different products and different watches. So Like, I don't call those losers, but like, obviously it's that one ad that's like, yeah, driving everything.
- [04:37]
B
Okay, yeah.
- [04:38]
A
But like I found like when we launch a higher volume of ads and for me that means that that spend threshold, like 40 a week. Okay, yeah, when we did that, I feel like we did find winners more quickly and like spend got spread out for a time. But like eventually Facebook settled into like, hey, we have a new winner. We're going to go spend 60% of the money on that.
- [05:02]
B
This is why I think this is happening too, because I, I've again went down a deep dive rat hole and finally found an article like a study that was published around Meta's new lattice structure. So, and this is my interpretation, just call out for everybody in this room. This is just Sarah's view of what this article said. Please go do your own research. Don't tweet at me and be like, Sarah, you said this is just my interpretation. Okay. The article, from what I can tell, basically has three different structures that they updated with Andromeda. The first one is unified, like unified modeling. I need to pull up the actual article. Let me do that real quick. So what this kind of means is that they basically took the thousands of robots that used to look at all the different behaviors like conversions and clicks and engagement, all this different stuff, and they squished them into basically like big ones, four or five big ones. Right, right. Model unification. So now we have instead of thousands, we got all these like big robots that will take a look at everything it processes text, images, videos and user behavior all at the same time. So that's the first thing they did. Second thing they did was they basically injected two different gates. Now I posted about this a while ago and people got real mad about it because I was like, technically it's an organic ecosystem that they're using now. And people were like, oh my God. I'm like, yes, but this is true. So they have two gates that you go through now. They have a 90 minute gate where all of your creative is being sent through this 90 minute window where they're basically checking to see if anybody does anything with it. And then they will use a seven day window and then they'll use something called a lattice zipper to zip the two pieces of data together.
- [06:36]
A
Interesting. So they're trying to measure like engagement first and then conversion.
- [06:41]
B
They're measuring engagement first now.
- [06:42]
A
Okay, this actually explains what's going on in my ad account right now.
- [06:46]
B
I'm like, what is that? This is the reason why we're only seeing two to three ads at a time, because the machine is basically making a prediction from that 90 minute window. And the interesting part is it's almost like imagine a little bit. There's a mathematician that sits with all these ads on the table like cards. And the mathematician has tons of knowledge about how his students respond to content like this. So it'll just pick like add one and add seven and say, based upon what I know about these students, they, these are probably going to do well. And then it will dump the rest of them off the table. It literally starves them on purpose. So to me, I'm like, this is amazing. Like, like amazing.
- [07:24]
A
Do you know what's happening in the Meta algo right now that I'm not happy about at all is it's essentially deciding. It's like you're playing a, a game of blackjack 100 and you're deciding whether to hit or stand after you just get one card.
- [07:40]
B
Yep, yep.
- [07:40]
A
So like you get a king and you're like, yeah, hit me. But then the next card's A3. But you already committed to the hit and you're like, oh, yes, I got 13 now this sucks. What do I do?
- [07:50]
B
Yes. And you now have to decide, like, you have to tell Meta, like how much I want to bet the whole fucking farm on these two cards. That's what meta is technically doing.
- [08:01]
A
Which again, down blind on every hand
- [08:05]
B
of blackjack, it's doubling down blind. So every single time you load. And this is the reason why I'm like, this is such, like a good indicator for me that I, I was right, that like, we shouldn't be doing volume. You shouldn't be doing volume. If you're shoving a hundred ads into the ad account, it has to push all 100 of those through that 90 minute window. It's only going to choose two to three anyways.
- [08:28]
A
So that has always been my biggest gripe with the volume angle. And by volume, let's define it. More than 100 ads a week.
- [08:36]
B
100%. So I did a poll on this to see what people thought and volume according to Twitter is 100 plus.
- [08:43]
A
So, okay, great. So when I've been in accounts that do this, we launch a hundred ads. Ninety of them don't spend more than $3.
- [08:53]
B
Yes.
- [08:53]
A
And I've always been like, that's not enough to get any kind of relevant learning going on year.
- [09:01]
B
Not enough percent.
- [09:02]
A
Should we be launching ads in smaller batches but more frequently? Ooh, like with like, like, if you want to launch 40 ads a week. Is it better to launch 40 on Tuesday or is it better to launch 10 on Tuesday and 10 on Wednesday and 10 on Thursday and 10 on Friday?
- [09:24]
B
Well, I'm trying to figure that out because I'm not entirely sure. Like I can't tell. I can't tell from the documentation. Meta does not give you a definitive run this many.
- [09:36]
A
So by the way, all this is is Meta telling us what we've known forever, which is like, hey, they have to optimize for scroll time on their platform. They're not optimizing for our bottom lines, they're optimizing for theirs.
- [09:49]
B
Yep.
- [09:49]
A
They want us to put out more organic, engaging content so people stay on the platform longer, so they get more ad revenue because their daily active user time is higher.
- [10:01]
B
Yep, yep, a hundred percent.
- [10:02]
A
Which is fine. But now we have to figure out a way to make that work for us too.
- [10:06]
B
Yeah, exactly. Well, and that's where I'm like. I think from what I can tell from Meta, it still seems to like a scaling campaign and a testing campaign because if you throw everything in. Oh really? That from what I can tell, this is kind of like a good general rule of thumb because you're going up against winners who are eating spending and Meta is going to throttle it. It's going to say compared to these three in this campaign, the rest of these are kind of shit. So we're just going to not spend on it. This is, I. It's too confusing. Like meta, give us some information, what are we supposed to do? I figured this out blind on my own. So anyways, the way that I look at it is I want ads that spend. So I'm probably going to. Should you drip feed or should you bulk post? I'm probably going to drip feed.
- [10:57]
A
That's what I think too because at least like if we're launching 10 at a time instead of 40, each one will spend more.
- [11:04]
B
Yes, 100. So this is, this is why I'm going for batches maybe 10 at a time. I might be loading those a couple times a week right now just to see what's going on. But I'm not going to turn them off until about that seven day window because of lattice zipper. Yeah, you can't turn them off until seven days because the zipper hasn't even done its job yet until day seven.
- [11:23]
A
Yeah, it's interesting. I've been super out of touch on all the Meta updates. I gotta listen to the marketing operators review of the Meta Performance summit too. I've just been Writing banger headlines for my clients that are winning. So sorry guys. So I've been very intentionally trying to take the advice of like, make good organic content work as an ad.
- [11:45]
B
Yes.
- [11:46]
A
And they're getting great engagement. They're not great at selling product. So like this and like they are. And like the product is very at the forefront of this content still. Like, even though like it's a, you know, more engaging, more organic kind of ad, people aren't confused that it's not an ad. But that makes a ton of sense.
- [12:10]
B
Yes, yes. So this is the reason why all of us have been like, well, what the hell, nothing's working anymore. Well, this is why is because we had all of our like ugly ad UGC very ADA styles shit package ready to go. We were like super good at it. And then they introduced this 90 minute, seven day, like seven day window, zipped them together. And so now the algorithm is going, your content is kind of shit in the 90 minute window, so we can't send it to people. And then it stopped working.
- [12:35]
A
Have you ever seen like firsthand seen a brand that has organic style content that crushes those ads? I can make organic content that does very well, gets, you know, tens or hundreds of thousands of views, good engagement and shares for like my very niche target audience. I can also make ads that convert. Yep, they're, they, there's no overlap in those two formats of content. And like I, I, I've been actively trying to do both the last two weeks and performance is down and I'm not pumped about it.
- [13:09]
B
Um, okay, what is the name? I'm gonna have to pull up this
- [13:13]
A
brand because like, I feel like this is something that everyone has always preached of, like make ads that don't look like ads and like, yes, you know, take a great piece of organic content and turn it into an ad. I've just never seen it in practice, like consistently for a brand. Brands have had like one offs that work. I've never seen anyone be able to like systematize this.
- [13:35]
B
There is a brand on Instagram which was apparently, I didn't know that this was a thing. Two very young guys, I think they were like 19, 20, couldn't afford ads, so they went and they basically made content that was organic but ended with an ad. And I'm going to show you this content because it's the weirdest thing I've ever seen. And this brand has exploded because of this exact style of content. And I don't, I don't know what to think about it or what to do with it. So this is a brand. They're called Wants and Needs. They're basically like a streetwear brand. This is the style of content that they started producing on the organic side and like I said, completely blew up massively. I have no idea whether they're running in this in the ad account, but this is what I think marketing is going towards. So this is an organic piece of content where they're just recording their boyfriend playing a game on the tv. And the whole piece of content, it looks organic. It's just watching a dude play a game. The interesting part is, as you go through the video, you're just in here hooked because it's gamified. We're going to see whether this guy is, like doing anything. But it's the way it ends that's really fascinating. It ends with an ad. Now he's got the clothes on. Now he's. Now he's like modeling. And there's like a follow in the background. There's a link. Like it's a cta.
- [15:01]
A
Yeah.
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B
But, like, ends with a cta, but it's purely organic at the front.
- [15:05]
A
Okay, Is this in their ad account though, or is it just posted? All right, so let me tell you what's going on with shooting devils these days. One, I'm out of stock of half my. So, like, everything's on pre sale, which isn't helping. But I literally, before we hopped on this pod, I just turned off all of my ads that were like, organic style content because they're sucking up all of this band and overall ad performance sucks. Okay, So I am thinking about, like, do I go the opposite way with this? And do I just triple down on organic content? Because, like, every single organic video I post, not everyone, most of them get good engagement. And I know for a fact organic views translate to sales.
- [15:54]
B
Yes, yes.
- [15:55]
A
Like, I've seen that since day one with this brand. Like, you know, a couple thousand organic views, it doesn't have to be a ton.
- [16:04]
B
Yeah.
- [16:04]
A
Sells hats. So I'm just like, man, do I just. Do I just. Instead of posting, what I'm trying to post is, you know, five or seven times a week. Do I just post 21 times a week? Save the ad budget for more creators to fill my content folders up.
- [16:23]
B
Yeah.
- [16:24]
A
And scale it that way.
- [16:26]
B
I mean, the, the organic creators would probably tell you. Yes, but the, the toughest part about that is you gotta. You're gonna have to be very consistent. You have to post every single day without fail. And whatever it is you're Posting has to be interesting every time.
- [16:43]
A
And trust me, like, the advertiser in me does not like this. I've made my living on. On ads for a long time. But I'm wondering, like, in the unique position of like, I'm only spending a thousand bucks a day on ads right now. Like, it's not, it's not a ton. In the unique position where, like, my ad budget's tiny.
- [17:00]
B
Yep.
- [17:01]
A
Especially because I need that budget for more inventory. That's the thing that's really limiting our growth right now.
- [17:06]
B
Yeah.
- [17:07]
A
Do I cut ads, buy more inventory, and triple down on just organic? Sorry. This turned into a free consulting call for my hat company.
- [17:16]
B
Well, okay. And this, we're trying to figure this out. And this is the reason why I'm coming to you with it. Because I'm like, based upon everything I read, lattice, the 90 minute windows and the zipper. Right. They actually call it lattice zipper in the actual documentation. All of these, all of these new mechanisms that they have lean towards you need to make better content. The problem is, without seeing which ads you ran, what style of organic were you running? Was it actually organic or did you think it was organic?
- [17:41]
A
No, it's actually stuff that performs well organically that I either edited like more product stuff into the end of it or like the product was just at the forefront the whole time.
- [17:54]
B
Interesting. So it wasn't this style though. It wasn't just like somebody running down
- [17:59]
A
a street doing no, I mean.
- [18:01]
B
And then there was like a hat at the end.
- [18:02]
A
No, it wasn't.
- [18:03]
B
Okay, well, that's what I'm trying to decide. How much organic. Right. Is 80% of the video pure organic just for entertainment.
- [18:12]
A
Do you know what I haven't done that I probably should is, is, you know, I do those videos that do really well that I talk about, like the price I paid for this bottle compared to like the price I pay next time, how much I value it. Those crush.
- [18:26]
B
Yep.
- [18:27]
A
And I, I think one of the reasons Engagement's great on is because like I'm holding people on till the end when I reveal what my value is in between tasting it and giving the value, do I just have to be like, hey, by the way, these hats are available on shooting devils.com and this whiskey, I. I'd pay 200 bucks for it.
- [18:45]
B
Again, I mean, kind of like. And that's kind of what I'm reading is just whatever you put into the ad account needs to be. The marketer in me just doesn't like this. It. It just needs to be something that's interesting to watch. It needs to be gamified. It needs to be contrarian. It needs to be a fight between two people. Or it needs to be like, really deeply educational. Deep, deep. On a subject that I just am really interested in. Like, it has to. I've thought about doing consumable first.
- [19:16]
A
Like, yapper ads, just about different categories of whiskey. Like, I can talk about what makes rye for four minutes. And if I'm doing that to camera just with the hat on, like, is that all I need to be doing?
- [19:34]
B
I think your customers too would love the history of it because we've tested a couple historical graphics, right. And they've done incredibly well. Like, you know, seven to ten thousand people.
- [19:42]
A
Whiskey history would be good.
- [19:44]
B
Whiskey history. This is why I'm like, I don't think that we're going hard enough into organic. That's what I think is happening.
- [19:50]
A
All right.
- [19:51]
B
In the attic count.
- [19:52]
A
Well, then I've got my marching orders from here.
- [19:56]
B
Well, and again, this is just how I'm interpreting it. I just. All I know is those three things were changed. Model unification, 90 minute windows, lattice zipper. So because of that though, I'm like, okay, organic. This reads you need to produce organic style stuff.
- [20:07]
A
Stuff. I'm gonna ask our, our fans for a favor on this episode.
- [20:13]
B
Okay.
- [20:13]
A
I want you guys to send me your best performing organic style content ads.
- [20:22]
B
Okay.
- [20:22]
A
I want to see what they are, and I want you to give me as much info as you're comfortable with. Like, on performance data. Like, did they take up the majority of spend in your account? Was performance good? Because like, I've always. I've made my living on making ads that look like ads. Like, all of the ads that I've ever been a part of were definitely an ad. Nobody was ever confused that it wasn't an ad.
- [20:45]
B
Yeah.
- [20:45]
A
And it's worked very well. So I've always, like, heard this and like, thought about, like, oh, yeah, our ads should be more interesting to watch. Like, organic content is just never, like, kind of needed to get there. Yeah, the tide's turning on that. But I'd love to see your guys examples of like, what's good organic style content that performed in your ad account.
- [21:05]
B
Yes. Especially since, like, I think a lot of us are still trying to figure this out. And this is the reason why I bring it up because I had a lot of people in my school, like, push back on me and they were like, I don't think this is right. Like, what do you think about this? This, Please, dear God, everybody Just come at me and help us figure this out because let's find out, like, what's changing. Some of us are going to come in here and be like, no direct response. Pure ads are working for me. And then some others are going to come in and be like, none of that has been working for two years and this is what's working for me. So I think it comes down to the type of content that you just get strong at creating. You are very, very good at value based, which I think your audience really loves for some reason.
- [21:42]
A
Yeah.
- [21:43]
B
And I'm like, in the ad account, that might crush. It's crazy to think about what, what this means. Like, what does all of these changes that Meta just made, what does this mean for content? I think it actually gives us a lot more freedom as marketers.
- [22:03]
A
We're gonna find out. I'm gonna test some new stuff based on this.
- [22:06]
B
I was so excited.
- [22:08]
A
But yeah, no, this is super interesting. I do feel like the last chapter of Meta is coming to a close and we're coming into a new era right now.
- [22:17]
B
This is gonna be a weird time to be a media buyer, be a creative strategist, be a marketer. But I also think, like I said, it gives you way more freedom. You can try all kinds of weird stuff.
- [22:26]
A
Yeah.
- [22:26]
B
Like, yapper ads just started to take off. They've been doing yapper on organic for two years, right?
- [22:33]
A
Yeah.
- [22:33]
B
I mean, it's been a thing over there for a long time. That's why I'm like, don't get stuck thinking it has to be ad focused. I think you could do whatever the hell you want as long as you're not loading a hundred ads. Because that is just gonna like dump 97 of them anyways. If you add, if you load, you know, ten at a time, couple times a week, you're good to go. You probably don't need more than that.
- [22:53]
A
I think that's probably right for now.
- [22:55]
B
Yeah.
- [22:56]
A
Otherwise, do your own research, people.
- [22:59]
B
Again, disclaimer. Do your own reason.
- [23:01]
A
Thanks so much for listening to Brain Driven Brands. We'll see you guys next time.
- [23:07]
B
Thank you so much for joining us on the show today. Appreciate you guys listening. If you want to follow me, I'm at Sarah Levinger. Anywhere you consume content, he is at Nate la. If you like this show and if you like this episode, go ahead and like, subscribe. Share with a friend. Drop us a review when you have a minute. We would appreciate it. Otherwise, have a great week. We'll see you next time.