01 Sep Say Hello To Standard Enhancements
Updated April 21st, 2023 with some good news! You can now preview your potential Standard Enhancement combinations (called Templates) before setting ads live 🎉
Have you noticed a little extra ✨sparkle✨ in your Ads Manager when creating ads? Say hello to ✨Standard Enhancements✨, recently introduced to your Facebook and Instagram Advertising by Meta.
Standard Enhancements are what they sound like: A bunch of enhancement types that Meta can make to your ads – which they consider a standard part of the process (now) – and which they believe will create the optimal ad, and enhance your potential for improved performance.
An element of Standard Enhancements is that Meta will show different versions of your ad and different combinations of your assets (copy, image, video, headline – a jumble of whatever is provided) to the audience based upon data signals they receive from users. Signals tell Meta about what that user might like, are likely to do with content or what kind of content a user may interact with.
You’ll find the Standard Enhancements option at the ad level (this is not something that we have seen offered at the time of boosting a post)- listed as a recommended feature (you may notice all of Meta’s features are strongly recommended but you do not always have to follow them for the best results. Tap here for more on this! 👀).
To get the most out of the Standard Enhancements feature, you’ll need to provide an image or video and a variety of text options. And when you provide those options… Meta goes crazy basically doing whatever they feel like it with it (but it’s data-based, they swear!).
What does Standard Enhancements mean for my Facebook ad text?
Text may be used as the headline, copy or as a description. So you could write out a whole lot of Primary Text, and Meta may swap the headline for the text, giving you a one-line ad with a headline they’ve conjured up from that copy. They will not, however, trade text between placements, so if you’ve optimised specific images for Stories, for example, (which I hope you have!) they will keep it where it belongs and will not mix it into a bad-looking feed ad.
Media ‘adjustments’ are referred to as Enhancements, too.
Adjustments made to the media elements ae based on what Meta believe people are most likely to respond to within your specified targeting. This could include adjusting the brightness, adding templates to the feed image (have you noticed some of your ads look…. heaps like ads and are kinda… ugly? Yea. We have too. *cries in digi-geek* 😠And you can blame Standard Enhancements), or apply artistic filters to your media 🤯 (which Meta describes as “adjust the colour temperature or add a vignette or radial blur when likely to improve performance”).
Basically, they do stuff to your ads they think will be better than what you’re uploading.
You can’t choose what they do, but you can control whether or not they can do it and to a degree, which enhancements they can apply. They might also make ‘Compositional’ changes too… Which in normal people terms, simply means they may adjust the display of the ad. This could include adding Info Labels or displaying relevant Facebook comments.
Did I see… MUSIC as an option?
Yep, you did see that Meta are now adding music to ads (automatically, and it’s… not always the banger you would have picked) – even if they’re a standard image or carousel static ad. Why? Because they want to pump up the eyeballs on ads via the Reels placement. So now, to have an ad show up in the Reels placement, you no longer have to (so people scrolling reels will be fed the ad amongst the scroll. Remains to be seen if these ads are truly going to be effective. But if they’re not – because one can reasonably assume users will scroll out of static ads in a Reels feed immediately – why would Meta even do it? Dollars, Baby 🤑 Dollars. The easier it is to run ads? The more people are going to do it. So, a beginner now has access to advertise with the ‘big guns’ in the Reels placements – only… are they really competing? I say no. They’re simply using the same platform. An optimised video will beat a Reel with stock music almost every time.
So… do we have any control here?
Yes and no. We can choose if and when Meta Ads Standard Enhancements are implemented, but we don’t get to dictate the final results. After you upload your media, you’ll be directed to muck about with the feature. And if you close that little screen without thinking because they’re always shoving stuff in your face and you just want to get the job done (G U I L T Y), you can still choose the feature from the ads creation level, anyway. We can influence the final ad, but not necessarily determine it. You can choose if they will be applied at all, but you can’t really choose how the final ad will present. You can choose the music though! From about 6 stock files 🎶
So what’s a brand to do?
Use it. trial the features. Play with one, turn off the others. Play with another one, turn off the others. Allow music and see if that single image ad outperforms or under performs against the one without the music enhancement. Then? Head right on over to our Free Facebook Advertiser Group and tell us what you found. We’ll be grateful to hear your ‘lil case study and if you need help interpreting the results, we’ll help with that too!
📣 Update: You can now preview potential ads the feature may create!
To view what different combinations your ad might offer up with optimised per person and standard enhancement features, click on the preview button to the right of the ad level screen and choose ‘advanced preview. From there, you can choose to view ‘templates’ of your ads.
As you work through the templates (there are about 20), it will show you potential combinations such as headline placement, and that famously ugly [lol, sorry but its trueee] coloured bar, too!
Spotted April 20: The option to switch between viewing the ad as you created it, or the ad as Meta will design with Standard Enhancements. These options don’t appear to be rolled out to all accounts yet, so keep your eyes peeled for that update 👀
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About the Author
Jess Riches is a Co-Founder of Enriches Business, Social Media Marketing Expert and Creative Marketing Manager for the Agency. Jess divides her time between overseeing client campaigns, assisting with the strategic approach, copywriting and ad design, delivering workshops to small and medium business owners and marketing teams, being a mum and relaxing on her Gympie property surrounded by birds, chickens, kangaroos and trees with a vino in hand. Get in touch with Jess here.
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