Paid Social Awareness Objectives (Usually) Waste Spend… Even for Awareness Messaging. Here’s a Better Strategy.
By Lindsey Allen
Intended audience: hands-on digital marketers
Tone: Somewhat technical
Paid social media campaigns have become an integral part of marketing strategies for businesses of all sizes. With the ability to reach targeted audiences at scale, social platforms mobilize companies to boost brand visibility and drive conversions. But with a growing number of in-platform advertising options, identifying the ideal campaign objective and bid signal can be an intricate task. Here, I discuss why awareness-based options often aren’t ideal, and what selections can yield superior results.
The Awareness Objective Issue, and The Alternative:
Optimizing for awareness objectives, including reach, is rarely beneficial, even when a campaign aims to raise awareness. Awareness objectives prioritize visibility. This is great. However, nearly every action-based objective, including engagement, traffic and the many conversion objectives, do the same. The key difference lies in the targets being reached and, ultimately, the quality of the visibility.
For campaigns with conversion messaging and intent (clicks, leads, registrations, purchases, etc.), objectives are fairly straightforward. So I’m going to specifically address objectives for awareness messaging.
Let's consider a marketer targeting adults interested in car magazines. They want to create awareness about an upcoming publication. With an awareness objective, the campaign reaches people who meet the core criteria: adults interested in car magazines. But the campaign and its spend lack additional audience discernment. On the other hand, an action objective like Traffic ensures that the campaign reaches the core criteria audience and focuses on users more likely to engage and click. By optimizing for an action objective, the awareness component remains intact, but with a more qualified group. The platform knows that these users are more inclined to visit a website or take in-platform action. Note that in-platform actions themselves also generate awareness, by notifying a target’s network of engagement, or by telling the platform the ad is quality content.
Considering that a budget, by nature, is not infinite, reaching everyone in an available audience at a given time is typically not feasible. And when it is feasible, it is often not desirable. By utilizing an action objective and directing dollars based on likely target behaviors — and, therefore, interest depth — marketers can ensure more efficient spending. Even if the target does not click, the action-objective impression is typically more meaningful than the awareness-objective impression.
Awareness objectives typically result in broader reach and, over time, lower per-user frequency rates as a result of prioritizing audience quantity. Meanwhile, action objectives generally register higher click-through rates (CTRs), as well as higher per-user frequency rates as a result of optimizing toward the core group audience members most likely to engage.
And though it is not the intent of awareness messaging, action objectives (vs. awareness objectives) will often produce significantly better metrics in the lower funnel for awareness messaging. Because, in addition to improved qualification, action objectives inherently have a higher potential for engagement. By optimizing for an objective that ultimately drives clicks, marketers maximize the opportunities for targets to become customers.
But no one size fits all campaigns. The above is a high-level take, and there are exceptions.
The Strange Case for Awareness Objectives
In a few cases, a marketer may benefit from employing an awareness objective: retargeting audiences and remarketing audiences. At first, this may seem counterintuitive. But these paid social audiences have already demonstrated a level of buy-in. The marketer knows they want ads in front of virtually all targets.
Now if the retargeting or remarketing audience is large — and especially if a marketer is running a short duration campaign where top engagers need prioritized asap — it’s often best to still run with an action objective. But if the audience is small and the campaign is long duration, they might consider an awareness objective. This is because a long-duration campaign with a small retargeting or remarketing audience will naturally see a high frequency rate with a qualified group, regardless of objective. If budget and performance margin allow, such a scenario could be a strong candidate for A/B testing objectives with a specific campaign.
Considerations for Bid Optimizations
In paid social, the most common bid payment options are CPM (cost per 1,000 impressions) and CPC (cost per click). For all campaign objectives — and, perhaps, especially for awareness messaging — CPM is rarely the play. Impressions are generated regardless of whether a marketer pays specifically for them, making CPC bidding the more cost-efficient strategy in most scenarios.
Selecting CPC ensures a marketer only pays when targets engage with an ad, guaranteeing a higher ROI. Clicks represent a tangible action, and indicate a higher level of interest and intent. The platform is putting in the work for every fraction of a penny. By paying for clicks, marketers avoid wasted ad spend on impressions that fail to generate user interaction. In a scenario where a campaign received no clicks but optimized bids for CPC, the campaign would still receive all impressions at essentially no cost.
Additionally, click-based bidding pushes the platform to drive clicks and impressions, rather than impressions alone. Clicks ultimately provide a more accurate measure of user engagement, enabling marketers to better understand an audience's preferences and behaviors.
Of course, there are a few exceptions. CPM bidding could be beneficial for carousel-heavy campaigns, or when word-of-mouth engagement is necessary for non-digital goals, or when brand awareness support is required for major, one-off initiatives where performance is not a goal (examples include brand lift studies or crisis-related scenarios).
But in most instances, CPC bidding is often ideal. For marketers currently optimizing for CPM, conducting an A/B test, whether concurrent or pre/post, could be worth considering. Note that CPC selection (or selection in general) is not available for some objectives on certain platforms.
Please note: I never cover or answer questions about specific platforms, personal performances or real-world examples. This blog covers high-level fundamentals applicable to advertising in general. The opinions expressed are my own, and not advice. Thank you!