The Rundown
Meta has announced a new update that will change the delivery of ads on its platforms. Touting the sky-net sounding, ODAX (Outcome-Driven Ad Experiences), Meta has promised a more streamlined way of setting deliverables for your Ad campaigns.
From 11 to 6, campaign goals such as ‘Conversions’, ‘Store Traffic’, and ‘Video Views’ will now be squeezed together into more streamlined objectives such as ‘Leads’, ‘Sales’, and ‘Engagement’, though some objectives will stay the same such as ‘Traffic’ and ‘App Promotion’.
When we say streamlined, we mean it:
The change will gradually roll out throughout 2022. Meta is recommending developers begin wrapping their heads around the changes ASAP as the updates arrive in 2022. You can read the full announcement here.
What’s an ODAX?
As described by meta, ODAX is an:
“outcome-driven ad experiences model (ODAX), where advertisers can select their designed business outcomes (e.g. Awareness, Traffic, Engagement, Leads, App Promotion, Sales) and the interface will guide advertisers to the most optimal campaign setup/creation paths to achieve that outcome.”
As the ads ecosystem continues to expand and fragment, advertiser confusion has become a significant factor. It’s increasingly difficult to understand which objectives to select and how to achieve those desired outcomes.
ODAX looks to simplify the campaign objective options to allow for a more user-friendly experience within the Ads Manager. Meta says that ODAX should:
“Provide Guidance: With better information about advertiser intent, Ads Manager is able to provide more guidance for advertisers through campaign setup, making it easier for them to achieve their marketing goals.”
What does this mean for advertisers?
Time will tell whether these changes limit the ability to tailor ad settings to a specific degree or whether the more overarching options help optimize goals and improve ROI in the long run.
Meta’s goal seems to be to bring the possibility of paid media advertising to as many people as possible and to simplify tools and techniques to guide users in the right direction. Is it possible that these decisions could limit the ability of advanced users? Or will advertising experts always find a way to focus their audience targeting?
Either way, it seems as though making the Ads Manager more intuitive has driven this new update decision, a common trend with other big brands like Snapchat or TikTok. As more intuitive design will always empower the user and drive more value for the brand.
For small-time businesses, who may not have a deep understanding of how Meta uses ads, this could be a great enabler for those getting into the business whilst also broadening the marketing opportunity for newly-founded companies.
However, with great simplicity comes great limitation. ODAX could make it more challenging to find niche audiences or communities. We’re putting a lot of money on the algorithms and pragmatics of Meta working in our favour.
Though the idea of more people having the right help in place so they can start marketing to their heart’s content is fantastic, audience targeting seems to narrow continuously on their platforms such as Facebook. However, there are still ways to find your perfect target audience; watch our Facebook and Instagram Advertising bite-size session here for super top-secret insights.
If you’d like help navigating the ever-evolving landscape of Meta’s ad-sphere or would like further insight into Facebook advertising, get in touch with our team of professionals here.
