What’s new in paid social: 3 big changes for Meta

Meta has been busy, with many new features and changes that paid social advertisers need to be aware of. We’ve taken a look at three of these changes, exploring what they mean for advertisers navigating the platform.

Let’s dive in.

1. Instagram launches ‘multi-advertiser’ ads

Instagram has launched an interesting new feature – you can now run ads alongside ads. It comes in the form of an ad placement and is called ‘multi-advertiser ads’.

When you create an ad to show on the Instagram feed, you can now select the ‘multi-advertiser ads’ option as a placement at the ad level. Your ad may then appear in carousel format alongside ads from related businesses, supposedly to highly-engaged users.

The goal of the new feature is to make use of Meta’s machine learning to help users when they’re considering and buying products.

The discovery part of this feature is very interesting, as it allows your ad to display alongside complementary businesses.

So, for example. when people see a wedding dress ad, they may now also see an ad for a wedding cake alongside. Handy, right?

This new feature will help Instagram users to discover your products when they show commercial intent and have a shopping mindset. It seems like a great feature for maximising ad delivery and boosting performances. As always, we recommend taking a ‘test and learn’ approach to new features, and look to see any uplift in performance after this has been included as a placement.

2. Facebook removes Special Ad Audiences

From 11 October, 2022, any ad set still using a Special Ad Audience will be turned off. Affected audiences need to be removed from ad sets to limit impact on performance.

Special Ad Audiences are essentially lookalike audiences for special ad categories (credit, housing, employment). Their removal means you can no longer create new Special Ad Audiences, and any ad sets targeting these audiences will stop delivering.

The move comes as Meta continues efforts to align its products with evolving European privacy rules.

If you’re running ads in an industry such as insurance, you’re likely to be making use of these audiences. Don’t get caught out – act now to redistribute your budget in order to limit any disruption to performance. Our advice would be take a test and learn approach to the other interest/behaviour targeting to find what else will work for you in the Special ads category.

3. Facebook adds gated content to lead gen ads

This one could be a biggie for B2B marketers. The introduction of gated content, means that users will be able to download digital products directly from your lead gen ads.

If you’re running lead gen ads, you’ll be able to host pdf, jpeg and png files directly on Facebook, allowing the user to make the download without leaving the platform. Yep, no more pesky delays and spam filters.

To use this feature, set up a lead gen ad as you normally would, but when it comes to the final step – setting up a ‘message for leads’. Rather than setting up a CTA to send users back to your site, you’ll be able to select ‘view file’.

All you need to do is select the file you want, and write up some text for the CTA button (ie. ‘Download file’).

Your leads will be managed the same way as they currently are – they’ll be kept by Facebook for up to 90 days and can be found within your Lead Centre. Third-party software can also sync these leads straight into your CRM of choice.

While you can already use lead ads to deliver digital assets to users, this new feature reduces the friction in the process, allowing the user to immediately access the file. If your digital asset provides value to the user, you may be more likely to turn that lead into a paying customer.

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