What Does the Removal of Placement Control Mean?

What does the removal of placement control mean?

So Meta is planning a future without placement control, and it has advertisers predictably freaking out.

Not only is the freakout completely expected, but so is this path for Meta.

If you’ve been paying attention, which I know you have, it’s long been obvious that this was on the roadmap.

It started with Meta recommending Advantage+ Placements and then continued with straight up burying the options to remove placements so you couldn’t find them.

That said, how this will be rolled out isn’t nearly as scary as it sounds.

In fact, I’d argue that it’s not a big deal at all.

Of course, how impactful it is will depend on how you’re approaching placement controls now.

So first, let’s talk about what exactly is happening.

Some advertisers are seeing an alert within the placements section of the ad set.

It reads:

“Changes to placement settings are coming soon.

Excluding placements, platforms, devices, and operating systems will no longer be available for your ad sets.”

So let’s be clear about what this means first.

There are several placement-related controls within the ad set.

You can individually remove a placement, like Ads on Facebook Reels or Audience Network.

Or you can remove an entire platform and its related placements, like Facebook.

Or you can restrict your audience to only those on a mobile device.

Or finally, you can limit your audience to only those on a certain operating system, like iOS.

This level of control is going away, though with some caveats.

A contact within Meta’s product team reached out to me to clarify that this will only apply to bottom of the funnel campaign objectives.

So as far as I can tell, this will apply to any campaign using the Sales or Leads objectives.

This is important because the most common scenarios when placement controls are necessary are when optimizing for top of funnel actions like reach, clicks, or engagement.

You will still be able to restrict by placement when using the Awareness, Traffic, and Engagement objectives.

You’ll also be able to continue restricting by placement at the account level.

Within your account controls in Advertising Settings, you can choose to remove Audience Network, Facebook Marketplace, or Facebook right column account wide.

I wouldn’t recommend you do that, but it remains an option.

Most importantly, though, you probably shouldn’t have been restricting by placement in the first place.

It’s not that there aren’t ever problems related to placement.

But when there are, they can usually be solved with value rules.

And as I’ve said on a prior episode, value rules are the future of Meta advertising control.

This is one more example of that, as Meta removes the traditional controls while recommending value rules instead.

So with all of this said, let’s talk about why this isn’t a big deal.

It is obvious that advertisers currently remove placements far more often than they should.

This change is surely a reaction to that fact, since advertisers are intentionally hurting their results.

The most obvious scenario is when optimizing for a conversion, especially if it’s a purchase or lead.

Understand that there are very real risks where you can waste money on a placement, but this isn’t one of them.

This is because certain placements are known sources of cheap and low quality impressions, clicks, and engagement.

But there aren’t any placements that are known to be sources of cheap and low-quality purchases.

That’s just not a thing.

And I haven’t seen this apply to leads either.

You can get cheap and low-quality leads for sure, but I haven’t seen that connected directly to a placement.

If you’re optimizing for link clicks or landing page views, Meta will spend a big chunk of your budget on Audience Network.

Why?

Because Audience Network is a known source of accidental and low-quality clicks.

And since you’ve only told Meta you want clicks, there isn’t a focus on the quality of that traffic.

If you’re optimizing for Reach, Meta will spend a big chunk of your budget on the Ads on Facebook Reels placement.

Why?

Because it’s cheap and there’s a ton of inventory.

But if your goal is awareness, the Ads on Facebook Reels placement probably won’t help you much.

It’s an easily ignored placement.

Meta doesn’t care about that since you’re saying that you want to get more reach, but that obviously should matter to you.

And if you optimize for ThruPlay views, you can bet a lot of your budget will be spent on the Audience Network Rewarded Video placement.

Why?

Because these placements are for apps to monetize themselves by forcing users to watch a video in exchange for virtual currency that can be used within their app.

These people don’t care about your video, but that doesn’t bother Meta.

You said you want ThruPlay views, and that placement can guarantee lots of them.

So in these three cases, and there might be more, there are very real weaknesses found in placements that can provide cheap and low-quality optimized actions.

And that’s the key here: These are cheap and low quality actions you are optimizing for, so Meta will leverage these placements.

Understand that these scnearios will not be impacted by the change to placement control.

I wouldn’t typically recommend optimizing for these actions in the first place, but know that you’ll continue to be able to remove these placements when you do.

So, back to optimizing for conversions.

There isn’t a placement that’s known to result in cheap and low-quality purchases, and I have doubts whether a placement is the source of cheap and low-quality leads.

For good reason, Meta wants you to use Advantage+ Placements when optimizing for bottom of the funnel actions.

I’ve found that Meta doesn’t even try to show ads on Audience Network when optimizing for conversions, for example.

Or if money is spent there, it’s a very small percentage.

The reason for that is that the algorithm is guided by the action you want, which is a conversion, and not an impression, click, or engagement.

But I know so many advertisers continue to remove placements when optimizing for conversions, and Meta clearly knows this too.

They do it because they assume wasted budget on placements like Audience Network, but this is rarely a real risk.

I encourage you to use Advantage+ Placements when optimizing for a conversion, especially purchases or leads.

And then perform a breakdown by placements after getting meaningful results and prove it for yourself.

Is Meta wasting a high percentage of your budget on what you believe are low-quality placements?

And I’m not talking about trying to micromanage placements by conversion rates, which is a waste of time.

Impressions have value, even when they don’t lead to the highest conversion rate.

Meta’s job is to balance costs and impressions and conversion rate to get you the best results overall.

But if you can prove that Meta is actually wasting your budget on a placement, as much as I have my doubts that this is a thing, you will still have an option.

And it’s the option you should have been using from the beginning: VALUE RULES.

Meta allows you to bid more or less on a placement with vaue rules.

So you could lower your bid by 90% on Audience Network, which will likely eliminate it from inventory.

Again, I wouldn’t recommend it when optimizing for a purchase, but it will still be possible.

And while there are only seven placements available for value rules now, I’m told that more are coming.

So if you have a proven problem related to placements that needs to be solved, don’t stress about the removal of placement control.

You will still have options with value rules.

And honestly, you should’ve been doing it that way in the first place.

So here’s the bottom of the glass.

Meta is removing placement control for Sales and Leads campaigns, but it’s not nearly as big of a deal as many advertisers think.

You can still remove placements for Awareness, Traffic, and Engagement campaign objectives.

You probably shouldn’t have been removing placements when optimizing for purchases or leads in the first place.

First, prove to yourself that there’s actually a placement-related problem when optimizing for conversions, and it’s not just based on your assumptions.

And if there’s a problem to be solved, use a value rule.

For more on this update, go to jonloomer.com/placements.