Study examines 57 Meta ‘levers,’ identifies top 4 for driving media effectiveness

New Nielsen research commissioned by Meta finds ad campaign optimizations that can deliver the strongest performance gains for US consumer packaged goods brands.

Which advertising campaign optimizations matter most? With the ad ecosystem rapidly evolving amid a looming global recession, this question has become increasingly crucial for marketers that face a staggering number of options to choose from.

To help consumer packaged goods (CPG) brands understand which factors deliver the strongest performance gains, Meta commissioned an in-depth marketing mix modeling (MMM) meta-analysis with Nielsen. The study found US advertisers could see a 35%–80% effectiveness improvement, on average, by optimizing their Meta campaigns for just four key levers: creative, frequency, duration and reach.¹ Moreover, marketers could maximize results by tackling the optimizations in that specific order.

The study included three years’ worth of MMM data for 41 brands across a wide range of CPG categories, including food and beverage, household care and health and personal care. The researchers looked at the correlation between 57 different Meta levers and media effectiveness, as measured by sales impact.² The study also analyzed the influence of structural factors such as overall category performance and brand size.

The study found that 57% of media effectiveness is driven by structural factors outside a brand’s control. Among the areas that a brand can control, the levers most strongly correlated with effectiveness improvements—with all other levers held equal—were creative best practices, raising frequency, increasing campaign duration and reaching more people.

Here’s a look at the findings for these four levers, in priority order, and guidance for how marketers can optimize each to help drive greater media effectiveness:

The lever most strongly associated with increased performance on Meta technologies is ad creative execution, with the study finding that campaigns with high-quality creative achieved 35% greater effectiveness.³

"High-quality" in this context means following creative best practices, such as optimizing the framing of video ads for mobile screens and ensuring that branding is highlighted immediately at the onset of an ad.

The lever second-most strongly associated with increased effectiveness is higher frequency, as measured by the number of times a person sees an ad in a week. In the study, Meta campaigns that served 2.25 impressions per week, on average, achieved 80% greater effectiveness compared with campaigns that served only one impression per week.⁴

In general, aiming for a frequency of around two times per week delivers the strongest results. However, the specific number of ads depends on the advertiser and campaign, so testing to determine the optimal frequency is key.

The next lever associated with increased effectiveness is duration. The study found Meta campaigns that were live for 50 weeks were 65% more effective compared with campaigns that were live for 10 weeks.

Continuity is key: The longer a campaign can consistently impress its core audience, the more effective it will be in generating returns for the advertiser.

The fourth lever most strongly associated with increased effectiveness is reach, with the study finding that Meta campaigns reaching 15% of the US population achieved 35% greater effectiveness compared with campaigns reaching 1% of the US population.

Effectiveness gains tend to be seen once more than 5% of the US population is reached and then tend to plateau once 10% of the US population is reached. Going past 10% doesn’t always add incremental gains, but it doesn’t lead to diminishing returns, either. In other words, aim for a minimum of 5%–10% reach and then target higher reach beyond that.

The study also found that advertisers can drive campaign reach more efficiently by tapping into four to six placements and targeting three to five demographic age groups, which in turn helps to further boost campaign effectiveness.

Experimentation can reveal the optimal reach approach for specific campaigns, and the same holds true for the other levers as well. When testing and investing budget, keep in mind the order of the study’s findings: By approaching the levers sequentially—creative first, then frequency, duration, and reach—CPG marketers can find the optimal strategy to help meet their goals and achieve greater gains in media effectiveness.