How to Set Up Meta AdROAS Campaigns: Step-by-Step Guide for UA Teams

Definitely in some cases higher ROS and LTVs and kind of faster pay periods. In some cases it was still all over the place. Um so it's you know it's still pretty interesting and campaign and type to start testing and you should start testing it ASAP. Why? because you can't rely only on all the apploving Google and unity address campaigns. Now you can actually get another kit on the block in into the uh nomixins world. We're the two and a half gamers the midnight crew talking UA advers and game design too. Mat feeling shak bringing the insight. We're rocking those vibes till the early daylight. But hey, you a master eyes on the prize.

Tracking data through the cyerspace skies. Feeling stacks like a wizard in disguise. Jack lift us to the high. Two and a half gamers talking smack. Slow hockey stick got your back. Ads are beautiful. They like the way. Click it fast. Don't delay. Uhhuh. Uhhuh. Uh-huh. Hello everybody. My name is Matarich and this is Two and a half gamers solo episode. And today I'm going to talk about one thing and one thing only that everybody's asking since this was launched which is meta address optimization guide and set actual setup guide. So I'm going to go through the stepbystep kind of setting

up the thing. Then I talk about why is it important and why is it interesting for people to actually start to testing. what are the the expectations? How can you think about testing the the meta address campaign and some examples and I'm going to walk you through the Facebook setup or meta setup in my account and I'm going to also show you all the other fancy stuff. So, I actually prepared a presentation because why not? because Felix did it, Yakob did it. So, I'm doing it as well because it's way better to actually show you the the real stuff instead of playing a game. So, this is me. My name is again, Matia Lancher. I've been in the industry for some time. Uh doing the UA for over 11 years, soft launched and global launched around 50 games. So,

it's been hell of a ride. I love it. That's why I'm always talking about the actual UA. So why why I'm actually talking about this? Why I'm actually talking about it? Look, Meta introduced the new campaign optimization method called Adas some time ago and it's actually very interesting. And in the past, your app was if it was monetized by inapp ads or inapp purchases, you had limited options to to optimize on the Facebook campaigns for the revenue. You have to have uh the proxy events like retention or engagements and try to pass the ad revenue as purchase event as a fork around. I've done it. You've done it. It definitely wasn't the right thing to do, but we did what we what we could. Now, the Facebook ad campaign with FA

with add impression event enables you to directly optimize for value. Finally, so it's based on ad driving which means the algorithm will seek out the users players who not only install your game but also generate the high ad impression value over time. For us UA managers, this kind of can improve the efficiency of the spent focusing on high LTV users that were previously hard to target with purchase based optimization. you know, essentially unlocks RS based feeling for admonetized games and apps as well, not only games. So, okay. So, what it actually is and how it works. So, add impression is predefined event in Facebook SDK and ad platform represent ad impression along the revenue earned from the impression. So in practice, when an ad is displayed to

a player in your game, for example, rewarded video or banner from an ad network, your app can log an ad impression event includes details, type of the ad and ad revenue earned from the single impression. So meta then uses these events as conversion signals. And uh when you optimize a campaign for ad impression value, the ad impression event and the revenue, Facebook actually tried to to maximize that ad impression. So to break it down, ad impression carries a monetary value. The revenue well your game earned from that ad view. Uh by sending this to Facebook, you're effectively telling the algorithm how much revenue each user is generating from the ads. So Facebook then sum these values per user or per cohort and

prioritize delivering ads to people likely to generate more ad revenue which is a higher total value. So this this is analogous to optimizing for purchase value. But here like the purchases are the third party impressions basically. So according to Facebook event definitions, if you provide a value which is often via value to some uh parameter with amp ad impression event, the value is interpreted as ad revenue and can be used for value optimization. That's why you actually send the ad revenue value in purchase before as a workaround because then you could use it for value optimization. So the current platform availability at the moment the address optimization is available for Android campaigns only. It was rolled out as of Q4 2024 and it's focused on Androids

because iOS is significant limitations due to ATD and all the privacy fun stuff. So for iOS, you can still send the other events, but only will be mapped as traditional purchase. So you still need to use the workaround that I was talking about. Again, in other words, iOS games cannot yet select that impression event as a conversion event for optimization in ads manager. Instead, any ad revenue you send from iOS will be added to your purchase ROS or value reporting. again the workound and it's not really great but it's the only option. What can we do? Facebook says they explore the support for iOS in the future and they actually announced it in one of their events. However, as of now address with impression event is only an Android focus feature. What can we do? Maybe

next time. So how to actually set it up? So we have four different uh implementation but before we go there there's one critical implementation consideration that Facebook requires and it is they require a minimal amount of data before it allows value optimization. This also true for purchase ROS campaigns historically uh but it was a little bit different. It was like 100 purchases. For add impression based optimization, the requirement is roughly 15 attributed add impression events. But careful with the value, not only add impressions with value from your game in the last 28 days with at least two distinct values. So these events must be coming from users acquired from the the campaigns on Facebook. It's not all organics or other sources needs to be failed. If this threshold isn't met when you try to set up a campaign or choose the conversion

event, you might find inapp ad impression grayed out or not selectable. In this case, you need to generate data first. Well, surprise surprise. Best practice is to actually run a normal MAI campaign or mobile app install campaign or app event optimization campaign. Perhaps optimizing for simple event such as an event or the actual ad impression or just installs with broad targeting require in the initial batch of players. Uh as you know you generate some ad impressions you send those values to to Facebook you will accumulate the needed volume of ad impression events quite quickly. Once you cross the threshold 15 plus events with value it will be unlocked automatically. So this implementation Facebook app just single all the MMP. So Facebook you must integrate either Facebook SDK or the MMP.

So that supports the actual format impressions add impression events without an SDK or server integration you won't be able to receive the signals or Facebook you won't be able to receive the signals. If you already use the Facebook SDK for login or analytics, you can use it to log events as well. If you prefer using attribution provider, ensure you are on a plan that supports user level at revenue tracking. This is because MMP needs to obtain the ad revenue data from the networks. On the on the upside, you might have to integrate each ad network's SDK and MMP ad revenue API. for example, appear log add revenue API for the impression or adjust track ad method. Anyway, so event mapping and configuration is important. So if you're using MMP, you need to map the MMP's ad revenue to events uh to meta ad impression event. For

example, app store uses the name of add revenue for ad revenue and you should map up that to Android well add impression on Android. I'm going to go through each step now because this is important. So we already went through Facebook SDK. Here we have uh stepbystep guide. So you need to go uh to active integration or find the meta integration in apps layer then click on meta ads obviously scroll down well you need to wait until it actually loads uh which takes a while and then you scroll down select the add revenue event click you select that impression event again value send value and revenue and then it safe. Easy, right? But what if wait

if what if you have a different MMP which is adjust for example. So, and it just you go to the partners in the campaign lab, you you select Facebook, you go to edit, and then to actual data sharing. You go to edit again data sharing. I'm going to pause here because it's on the top of the data sharing. Uh so, you then enable add impression mapping. You go save and that's it. enable add impression event mapping. Thank you very much. But what if you have a different MMP and that's singular? No problem. We have the solution for that as well. You go to attribution partner

configuration Facebook and go to edit configuration. There you go. Event post packs. And then you need to have you need to select the SDK name which is admin user. Where are you? Here. And then go to add impressions send all. And then also include revenue. Thank you very much. Easy as that. And this is obviously all working because you implemented all the SDKs and all the events correctly. I'm actually going to release a doc um guide on my on my substack in the brutal section where I have also the implementation guidelines covered. in in very big detail. Obviously, it's

just guidelines from Facebook singular and not only singular but also upsell and adjust but everything in one place which is important very very important. So what do we have here? So in summary the the impact of adra optimization was been very positive for the right kind of apps. So the admonetized games and also some apps or basically any app with significant ad revenue gain the most and you can treat ad engaged users with the same importance as purchases. Obviously uh there were some measurable improvements including higher roas improved retention and engagement metrics more on more balanced monetization not only relying on IIPS

and you know there's an ability on unlock the spend in markets or audiences that were previously hard to justify because you know you were talking about different engagement events now UA managers I mean we still need to test and compare obviously But I've seen definitely uh in some cases higher ROS and LTVs and kind of faster payback periods. In some cases was still all over the place. Um so it's you know it's still pretty interesting u campaign and type to start testing and you should start testing it ASAP. Why? because you can't rely only on all the apploving Google and unity address campaigns. Now you can actually get another kit on the block in into the

uh nomix. Then what are the kind of the best practices? So the best practices would be well there is a lot of them you know it's all like ensuring high quality impression level data it means verifying the in the events manager or your MMP dashboard that the events are actually coming through with expected values as you know you can have a wrong currency or incorrect value cents versus well you can send cents versus actual dollars, which definitely can skew the optimization. For instance, instead of 5 cents, you will send $5, which completely confuses the algorithm. I mean, I'm not sure if this could actually help or not. How hard to say. Use test devices to actually generate the couple of ad impressions and confirm the events to show up in meta event

manager with right parameter. Uh again best practices the actual event volume is important. You you have to meet the the event volume criteria which is more than 15 events with two distinct values. Also if your app has both IIP and ads consider running separate campaigns. One optimized for purchase value which is IIP RO and one for ad revenue. So this allows each algorithm to specialize and find the respective types of users and players. Some advanced strategies could actually involve combining these user these values sending a single total revenue event that sums IIP plus that revenue for each users. However, that is complex and you risk ming the borders kind of confusing the whole algo

and uh this whole shenanigan kind of uh could mislead the um the results. It's usually simpler to have one campaign target purchases obviously and then one target the ad monetization players and you can allocate the budget between them on which revenue stream you want to grow. That said, avoiding targeting the exact same audience with both in way that competes. Maybe use the value rules or geosplit if needed. Just, you know, try to monitor the overlap with Facebook's overlap tool to ensure you're not actually bidding against yourself. Uh, you know, you use broad targeting. I mean, what are the other options these days, right? and allow yourself to monitor the learning phase and kind of trying to exit the learning phase as quickly as you as you can. Then we have

some mistakes and pitfalls in this in this equation because you can still have small volumes before launching. So even though you are kind of passing the threshold with 15 events and you have more than 15 events get closer to 30 or 50 events with definitely different values not only two but let's say five to 10 which then allows you to get better algo or it kind of works a little bit better in terms of the event volume. So you train the algo before you start. That's what I'm trying to say. you you need to have a look or you need to triple check the the mapping and the data flows because for example on FPSAR you can accidentally map ad revenue to a custom event instead of the predefined ad impression and Facebook will treat

this as a generic custom event which can't use be for be used for value optimization so you need to be sure that it's math to exact Facebook event. Similarly, just the same thing with add impression event mapping. You need to check that box that I showed you and enable that data sharing. If you miss this step, it's not going to work. Okay, then you know you it's still only kind of working on Android, right? that I mentioned. Well, it's coming to iOS as well, but it will take some time. And then this Facebook address campaign can be a game changer for for your app. You need to kind of set up this correctly. It takes time

and there are some steps if you miss them then you won't be able to to make it work. You need to set up all the campaigns according to the to the guidelines and obviously continue test and monitor everything. Now the thing is there was some update on for that address campaigns silently released on on on Facebook and their iOS is coming. So you should be on top of things and let me actually go into the Facebook dashboard and show you what you need to do. So just create a promotion campaign because you have all the all the setup done on the MMP side on the implementation side you're good to go. So let's say US test otherwise. Okay,

good. Obviously we said we need to have a significant amount of money also to exit the learning phase. Let's say 150 would be enough. Okay, tier one to ensure we have quite a broad audience. I borrowed our my friend's app to be able to to create this. So instead of app installs, we go to maximize value of conversions. Here we have in a purchase or add impression. Let's go to add impressions. Let's see. We have one day, 7 days. I want seven days. So dear listeners, the ROAS goal is not available for now, but it should be and will be in the future. So now it's just maximizing the value of conversions, right? So then we go to the

audience. We set us and tier one. US user. Oh, not us. Oh, not user. The United States. United States. We go to United Kingdom. Very, very good. Germany as well. Let's go to what else? Canada. and we go to Australia. Okay, awesome. Then what do we have here? This is not really that important, but kind of is. Then we have advantage. Everything is advantage plus. Okay, good. Next, let me go to creatives, which now it's going to be just test because I'm going to pause it afterwards. Okay. But here, let's select the uh the the video. Whatever is the video. Why do I

have to play go in here? Okay, let's try actually. Oh, wait a second. That was my face. It's me and John, right? Skip. Okay, fine. Thank you very much, John. Thank you very much listeners for bearing with me when I'm actually trying to Okay, there is a problem. So, let's just use their proper Facebook page. Okay, good. Good. It's good. Thank you very much. Okay, so this is basically it. We go publish and we Our campaign for address is live. So simple as

that. Now you should try and try it for yourself. If you have any questions, please comment under the video. Join our Slack channel. I will keep you posted about all the all the news and everything that regarding the meta address campaigns because I'm following this very closely. I want to make this work and I know there are some updates coming and and I can't wait. So, thank you very much for coming again. I see you next time. Let me know if you're running some great ad impression events and campaigns. Cheers. Bye-bye. [Music]

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