Facebůh: I reduced ROAS by 59 % with Feed Image Editor

A case study on using Feed Image Editor for dynamic advertising on Facebook.

Read below about how Feed Image Editor was used by one of its clients - Facebůh and performance specialist Norbert Lapčák. Norbert specializes in performance advertising primarily on Facebook and Criteo platforms, but he and his team cover all major advertising platforms for clients and are now focusing on video content creation as well. 

Catalogue (dynamic) advertising is one of the evergreens of Facebook advertising. It's a great basis for a longtail, which can also deliver good long-term returns. If you have at least the basic standards to support the feed, a sufficient number of products, a reasonable budget and you are at least a bit of a Facegod, you're halfway there. 

Funstorm.cz was not lacking any of the above, but because Facebůh was not only there halfway, but rather fully, you are now reading this case study. Funstorm is an online store running since 2004, but mainly founded by people who love adrenaline sports like snowboarding, skateboarding, freeskiing, BMX, moto-x, downhill, and more. Snowboarding is just a passion, skateboarding then an affair of the heart, which is why you can equip yourself for the mountains and the street with quality clothing.
 

Not that we're exactly bored with our client's advertising campaigns, Funstorm's focus on social media is perfect. But at the same time, we were constantly looking for ways to raise the bar even further. In goods, services, but also in advertising formats. This is where we've rather stumbled in the case of Facebook, as dynamic ads have generally not evolved much over the years - I'm talking now more about the possibilities of creative adjustments as such, not about campaign performance. How thrilling it was when Facebook added the ability to upload your own frame to your ads! Great, but what's next?

We have third-party solutions for technical feed editing (hello MERGADO), but that doesn't address the ad visuals per se, which plays an unquestionably important role these days. Because what, among other things, is the purpose of advertising? To grab people's attention. That's why my client and I were looking for other ways to take dynamic ads to the next level and differentiate ourselves from the competition.

Online app Feed Image Editor

Fortunately, we discovered Feed Image Editor - an online application for bulk enhancement of product images in the feed. It works in bulk and completely automatically - the only requirement is to have an account on MERGADO (which you already have if you are serious about performance marketing). Feed Image Editor will help you to improve the image advertising of your online store and increase not only traffic (or CTR), but usually also sales. There are great features like removing backgrounds or improving the resolution of product images. You can create templates with custom graphics, schedule them in campaigns and export feeds for different ad systems.

For Funstorm, we started with Facebook, where we found it most adequate, but we're also thinking about Google Shopping in the future. By the way, you can easily try the uniqueness of the software yourself - you don't even have to pay for the first 30 days, as the authors provide a 30-day trial. After that, you have to count on a (nowadays probably relatively insignificant) fee of 59.00 USD without VAT for each single exported feed, regardless of the number of exported products in the feed.

The idea behind Feed Image Editor is brilliantly simple, yet completely functional. Best of all, the program is intuitive - no complicated setup is required - just turn the app on in your MERGADO account. Import the feed and you can start editing it right away. And there are so many possibilities! You don't even need a graphic designer, you can do everything yourself.

The program offers a diverse range of options and feed customization to meet the needs of almost all existing e-commerce platforms. But customizing the feed format is just the beginning. The real game-changer are the options regarding editing or adding graphical formats and elements. Insert price tags, discounts or free shipping information directly into images. If you are just out of ideas, there are also editable graphic templates, frames or stickers. Just upload your own online store or brand logo to the app and customize the design of the entire creative in your brand colors. For your punchy text, feel free to choose from more than 150 fonts.

Train hard, advertise easy

Incorporating Feed Image Editor templates into your campaigns is simple. Just create a new test catalogue in Commerce Manager or regenerate the URL of the current one (which may break your filter sets though). Once the upload is complete, you are ready to test!

After that, all you have to do is set up your campaigns according to your requirements and needs. We only wanted to test the graphic creatives, so all other setup parameters remained unchanged. We targeted dynamic ads to a wide audience of 18-65 years old, all genders and classic auto placements (but most of the purchases afterwards were made from FB news feed and IG Stories placements, all from mobile phones). Campaign optimization was set up to convert, maximizing the number of purchases.

Before we get into the results and hard numbers, let's look at the visual differences before deploying templates modified in Feed Image Editor, and after.

How it turned out

The testing lasted for about 20 days, and in the end, due to the limited budget, we tested only 1 template that we found more visually appealing. 

So, to summarize the results, after deploying our template, there were rapid changes in most of the core metrics. While CPMs on the same target audience remained similar, other metrics improved massively. 

The jump in CTR to 4.90 % shows the power of a creative template at first blush. Right on the tail end, the reduction in CPC to below 1 crown is evident, which helped us bring a lot more users to the site. And what about the most important thing, namely conversions? 

We got plenty of them, of course, but most importantly, cost per acquisition (CPA) was cut in half, and ROAS dropped by a whopping 59 %. And it has to be said that the original wasn't the worst. We are talking about the ROAS of the platform, but only the attribution window of a 7-day click-through. However, the consequences were also felt overall, with last-click acquisition ROAS dropping by as much as 68% in Google Analytics.

Better images, more sells

Although video, for example, is currently on the rise, many companies are still struggling, especially with more demanding productions or the need for more detailed planning. An image still has a lot to say, especially when you tune it with a great tool what Feed Image Editor undoubtedly is. Simplicity, speed and efficiency are paramount here. Within minutes of activation, you can have unique graphic templates in your ad that will attract your potential customers like never before. Definitely don't hesitate to give it a try - you even get the first 30 days for free.