Why audiences are the new oil: a new course for Mobile Dev Memo
Originally published March 2020. Some platform details have changed since; the webinar took place on 17 March 2020 and registration is closed, and Meta’s audience tools and our own view of what drives performance have both moved on, as noted below.
In a 2020 predictions post for Deconstructor of Fun, Eric Seufert argued that how Facebook builds and manages audiences would become a much bigger part of mobile marketing. I built a Mobile Dev Memo Academy workshop on that idea. Our current recommendation is to prioritize creative testing while using appropriate audience controls.
What was the “audiences are the new oil” argument?
The first of three trends in Eric Seufert’s piece, 2020 Predictions #6: Three User Acquisition Trends Studios Will Have to Ace, runs like this:
- Running many creative variants is how the platforms explore and define audiences. Creative experimentation effectively lets Facebook build its own lookalike audiences at the ad set level, but those audiences are not visible to the advertiser.
- That exploration is expensive, because it means spending money to find which creative-to-audience pairings do not work.
- So in 2020, he expected audience construction and management to become a larger part of the workflow. Advertisers would build models that identify valuable users early in their time in a game and push them into lookalike lists, using any in-game event as a predictor of long-term value.
- He also argued that audiences would come to be seen as assets in acquisitions and partnerships.
What was in the course?
The workshop, Winning with Facebook Audiences: How to unlock massive scale through audience expansion (archived copy; the original site is gone), was aimed at intermediate to advanced Facebook advertisers. Its topics, per the course page:
- How Facebook constructs audiences
- Basic campaign setup
- Behavioral audiences
- The interplay between budgets, bids and audience sizes
- The interplay between in-app content and potential audiences
- Matching creative to audiences
- Audience construction under Campaign Budget Optimization (CBO)
What has changed since?
- The event is over. It ran on 17 March 2020, so there is nothing to register for.
- Our view is creative-first. We prioritize testing several ads across angles, hooks and formats within each creative direction. See why creative is a targeting strategy and what a lookalike audience is on Meta and why it matters less after ATT.
- The audience-versus-creative distinction. For how to tell creative fatigue from audience saturation, see creative saturation vs. audience saturation.
Frequently asked questions
Is the course still available? The archived live workshop has passed. A currently available recording has not been verified.
Does this audiences-first view still hold? Audience controls still matter. Our current recommendation is to prioritize creative testing across angles, hooks and formats while using the audience controls appropriate to the campaign.
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