Facebook Auction Overlap Tool: A True Game Changer
Alright, alright I know you are probably thinking “Game Changer? There have been 20 game changers in the last year alone, how is this one any different from the last?”
Well, you aren’t wrong, that’s for sure. There have been a ton of “Game Changers” in the last year in the social media advertising field, but this one really snuck under the radar. It’s called the Facebook Delivery Tool, which contains an amazing overlap tool inside of this feature.
How Do You Get To The Facebook Auction Overlap Tool?
Simply click on (or just highlight) the ad set you want to look at and click that “See Delivery Insights” option.
Once you get to the next screen, you will see these three options towards the middle-left of your screen.
Note the little i’s. These are everywhere. You will want to read up on some of the other features available in this dashboard eventually, but I am going to introduce you to the second (Auction Overlap) and the third (Audience Saturation) tools. Mainly because the first tool (Activity History) is purely history and you probably already know how to see that other places.
The Auction Overlap Tool
If you were to hover over the i right next to the name, it says this:
Or:
Now, all of the information shown after you click on the tab is useful, from the Amount Spent to the Date breakdown, and even to the feedback Facebook provides day to day.
Let’s start with “Auction Overlap Rate.” You can go ahead and read that little i again (told you there was going to be a few of them) if you like or here is the just of it:
This means that you aren’t using proper exclusionary targeting in your ad sets. Like the example above, you can see that I created an ad set on the 18th (today) and didn’t use proper exclusionary targeting, therefore there is a huge overlap and my ads didn’t deliver .53% of the time. This isn’t a lot because that new ad set was running for a short time, but that .53% can easily turn into a 25% if you aren’t fixing your audience overlap mistakes.
The amazing thing about fixing those mistakes is that Facebook provides the ad set where the overlapping is happening right for you to click through on and fix. This is the same exact process with if there was overlapping in the “Overlapping ad set 2/3” columns. Super easy right? Now that we have that one done, let’s move on to the other tool I wanted to show you.
Auction Saturation Tool
Go ahead and click on that 3rd tab and read the i, or:
Here is another example of what we are looking at. The first two columns should look familiar, while some of the others may seem brand new to you.
Again, let’s start from the left and go with “First Time Impressions Ratio.” I will just share the definition this time:
In the above example, you can see that the % keeps dropping steadily with a few peaks thrown in. This will be normal anytime you spend money on Facebook advertising. The longer an ad set goes on for, the less likely it is to show to brand new people.
Reach is reach.
Our last column I will discuss is the “Audience Reach Ratio.” This is going to be extremely useful when evaluating flight times for ad sets, or:
While the First Time Impressions Ratio will more than likely keep going down, this one will keep going up. Why? The more you spend, the more your ads are served to your audience, the more % you are reaching.
This tool is going to be useful in evaluating your audiences and if you are throwing away money by serving too many times to the same people.
The Facebook Audience Overlap tool can be used for a variety of useful reasons such as checking your ad set targeting to make sure your audiences aren’t overlapping, causing you to lose impressions. Another reason it’s useful is you can see how many people in your intended audience are seeing your ads for the first time. Finally, another important takeaway from this tool is you can see what percentage of your audience you’ve exhausted.
Now, go out and give it a shot and tell me if any of your audiences are overlapping!
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