Marketing Campaign Execution: Platforms

The launch of my Ad Campaign across the different social media ads platforms

2c. Ad Campaign Platforms

I now have my Marketing assets. Next, I need to create campaigns on the different social networks. I can usually aggregate different compatible assets (ex.: same aspect ratio) in a carousel, which I think it’s best to engage users.

This are some of the key pros and cons I’ve experienced while working on on each platform for the first time:

Reddit

Pros:

• Easy to target communities. I started with writing, creativewriting, fictionwriting, and other communities, and let Reddit expand.

• The best yet easiest to use Ads Manager Dashboard. A good dashboard helps you track what’s going on. Even if, like me, you have a single Campaign with a single Campaign/Ads Group and one or two ads, you still want to track your efficiency and spend. I really like the breakdown by Community:

Cons:

• Carousel only works with all images or videos, not a combination of the two.

• It’s easy to change existing ads, yet every change, even llimited text changes, triggers a review. The ad will pause until the review is completed, which can take hours. How about using AI to instantly approve inconsequential changes, folks?

Facebook/Instagram

Pros:

• Easy to edit existing ads, with best preview of what customers will see.

• Can target Interests like Fiction writing, Creative writing, or Writing

• Best Carousel: I added the main image, two videos, and an additional image showing the genres you can pick in bebooq. Users can scroll thru them.

Cons:

• Inferior Ads dashboard in the Meta Business Suite (MBS). I wasn’t able to easily start Ads Manager (separate tool) due to a technical glitch (Meta wasn’t able to “import data” from MBS Ads to Ads Manager), I had to spend some time to solve Meta’s issues to get this:

X

Pros:

• Good Ads dashboard

  

• Great ad preview functionality

• Great carousel functionality, can combine images and video, change the order they’re displayed.

Cons:

• You can’t change the text of an ad. You need to Copy ad, then make sure the new ad is what’s under the Ad Group

• Confusing navigation between Campaigns, Ad Groups, and Ads, and overall process of reviewing and launching a new or updated campaign.

Google Ads

Cons:

• The most annoying, convoluted, and frustrating, by far!

• I can’t really design my ad the way I want. I can specify:

  • Headlines (up to 15, 24-30 characters each)

  • Long headlines (up to 5, up to 90 chars each)

  • Descriptions (up to 5, 60-90 chars each)

  • Images (up to 20)

  • Videos (up to 5)

• Google will then combine the above based on the different delivery media (YouTube, Gmail, Search, Display, Discover). I guess covering such a diverse set of media is hard, hence why I can’t define how the ad will look. That said, I’d rather format my ad for each media than let it randomly combine.

• They blocked my ads because in some I had written “FREE” all uppercase, or because there was an exclamation point (!).

• My ads are “Under review” and some of my assets have been “Pending Under review” forever. It must take them a long time to figure out how to deliver ads. Maybe they should use AI to speed up the process.

• Not possible to set a maximum amount for bidding. I may end up paying $10 for a click if their algorithm finds the “right” (for Google) conditions. I’ve set my maximum bid to $0.41 on all other platforms, here I need to “trust” Google. Which I did, yet it doesn’t work anyways!

Pros:

• Nothing - not sure if in “Pending” or “Big strategy learning” status, it all seems like a black hole. Hopefully they’ll soon start charging me, that would mean the campaign is finally running and I can see results. At that point, I’ll also be able to see my cost per click and compare with other platforms.

TikTok

I have a couple of sub-1 minute videos I could publish. Should I?