Facebook announced the new add-ons in a blog post, as reported by TechCrunch.
Previously, the Conversion Lift tool — launched in January — allowed advertisers to see if their ads were actually improving online and offline sales. However, companies wanted more, as Brad Smallwood, Facebook’s vice president of measurements and insights, told TechCrunch.
The new functionality now allows companies to test multiple ads against each other to see which perform best. As an example given in the Facebook blog post, the German shopping club Westwing used Conversion Lift to compare link ads and carousel ads. Westwing found both approaches worked well, but carousel ads drove registrations 34 percent more effectively.
The way Conversion Lift previously worked was by comparing two groups of people; those who saw the ads (the test group) and those who didn’t (the control group). The update means companies can expand their range of control and test groups.
Additionally, Conversion Lift now also tracks purchase activities across websites and apps. As TechCrunch points out, this is good news for app developers — they can focus not only on driving downloads for campaigns, but also on how to improve revenues.
In October 2014, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg talked in an earnings call about an increased need for data in advertising. In 2013 data showed for the first time that the average American adult spends more time consuming media digitally than on television, and the gap has only grown from there.
She also said Nielsen data showed an accuracy rate of less than 60 percent for advertisers — in other words, a bit less than half the time, ads are being served to the wrong demographics.
